Prostate Cancer Discussion Forums

If you’ve come here for discussion forums, I apologize but the ProstateBiopsyBlog forums were broken a few years ago with some WordPress and server updates.

There are hundreds of comments about prostate biopsy side effects and complications and you can participate with comments here: What To Expect After Your Prostate Biopsy

There are also many good forums on the internet for discussion of Prostate Health and Prostate cancer.  Here are a few-

American Cancer Society Cancer Survivors Network for Prostate Cancer

Us TOO Prostate Cancer Online Support & Community Discussion

Cancer Compass Prostate Cancer Discussions

The Cancer Forums Prostate Cancer Forum

Facebook Prostate Cancer Support Group

Risk of Cancer after Negative Prostate Biopsy

I’ve written many times about the false negative rate involved with using a biopsy not only to confirm cancer, but to search for it in the first place.  It’s an invasive procedure that can easily miss cancer, resulting in concerns that you may have undetected cancer that can spread in the years following.  Here’s a recent article with some statistics:

https://www.urotoday.com/conference-highlights/aua-2018/aua-2018-prostate-cancer/104293-aua-2018-population-based-outcomes-of-men-with-a-single-negative-prostate-biopsy-importance-of-continued-follow-up-among-older-patients.html

Following a negative initial biopsy, 23.7% of men are still diagnosed with and 1.8% die of prostate cancer within 20 years.

One Month Later

It’s been a month since my second trans-rectal prostate biopsy.  Suffice to say, it is not a pleasant procedure.  The side effects can be shocking, and in rare cases, even fatal.  And that’s not even considering the worry about a biopsy result positive for prostate cancer.  I wrote about the risks here- https://www.prostatebiopsyblog.com/prostate-biopsy-recovery-side-effects-complications .

I am glad to say that I did not get an infection and that no cancer was found.  The blood in my stool lasted only a day or two and even the traces of blood in my urine were gone in a few days.  I did have blood in my semen for almost a month, declining from solid blood red color at first to a trace of pink after a few weeks.  The worry about the results lasted a very long three weeks until I received “the call”.

One thing I do know, I have a small benign tumor or lesion in my prostate based on my 3T MRI.  So, I will not be waiting another 10 years until I seek another MRI or one of the newer blood/urine tests for prostate cancer.  Even though no cancer was detected, I consider myself on active surveillance.  The team that did my MRI and biopsy at the NIH/NCI is advancing the technology. I’m hoping that within a few years there will be even better non-invasive tests and treatments, if necessary!