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The PSA Blood Test and Beyond

Making Sense of PSA Test Results

The PSA blood test is known to be flawed. It is certainly no where near a 100% reliable indicator of how much cancer you have or how dangerous or aggressive it may be.

But given it's the best indicator going, just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean it shouldn't be used to detect prostate problems. PSA testing and the digital rectal exam are the two primary tools in the prostate cancer detection arsenal right now.

Then too, guess you could say the PSA exam has been tweaked over the years. To increase both it's sensitivity and interpretation accuracy.

By that I mean over time other things have been added to the must evaluate category when it comes to the PSA blood test. To help glean all the insights available from the current PSA test results.

There have been attempts to adjust the numbers for ethnicity and age.

There is a PSA test range that ranks the PSA numbers to help give you an idea of the odds of having cancer are from the prostate specific antigen levels found.

You might want to take the density of an enlarged prostate into account.

How much so called 'free PSA' is in the blood stream is also revealing.

Yet while it's getting better, medical professionals still know that there have been no large clinical trials that conclusively demonstrate that having a PSA test helps to reduce your chances of dying from prostate cancer

Which is why the search continues for genetic markers in the urine, saliva or blood that might better indicate what's going on with your prostate. But until some else is deemed ready for prime time, psa screening by the PSA blood test is the best early warning system going for now.