Prostate cancer is the third most common type of cancer in the US. Caught early, prostate cancer is highly treatable and has a high survival rate. However, prostate cancer also has a high rate of recurrence, affecting 30-40% of patients. That's why prostate cancer patients must continue to undergo regular blood tests to monitor their levels of prostate specific antigen, or PSA, even after cancer treatment has been successful.
In the recent past, prostate cancer patients had to wait for their PSA levels to rise to between 10-50 ng/mL (considered a high and dangerous range) for standard imaging modalities such as CT, MRI and bone scan to detect cancer. And, as sophisticated as these imaging methods are, they can seldom capture the physiological information needed to diagnose what's known as a biochemical recurrence of cancer, or BCR, which accounts for up to one-third of recurrent prostate cancer cases. Adding to the uncertainty, cases of BCR can be especially difficult to diagnose because BCR produces no symptoms and can be accompanied by a relatively low rise in a patient's PSA level.
These conditions have forced many patients to wait for their PSA levels to rise to unsafe levels before standard radiological imaging tests were capable of detecting cancer recurrence, and again, these tests were often unable to identify cases of BCR. Because about 1 in 3 cases of BCR metastasize (spread to other areas of the body), waiting and/or having a less comprehensive test can be life-threatening.
Now for the good news: FDA-approved Axumin (18F-fluciclovine) is a novel injectable tracer used with PET/CT imaging to provide exceptional diagnostic accuracy of recurrent prostate cancer, even in men with rising PSA levels as low as <1.0-2.0. Axumin PET/CT is capable of capturing both physiological and biochemical changes in the body, including early signs of tumor cellular growth that often do not show up using other diagnostic tests, enabling it to discover cases of BCR. Axumin PET/CT can spot recurrent lesions and metabolic and biochemical changes very early in their course, even before symptoms appear, so that any recurrence of prostate cancer can be caught earlier than ever before.
Axumin PET/CT is able to target local lesions and signs of metastasis sooner and with greater accuracy than other modalities. For prostate cancer patients, earlier testing and more comprehensive imaging can mean a quicker and more accurate diagnosis for immediate and optimal treatment. It's a true leap forward in the early discovery of recurrent prostate cancer.
If you have had surgery or radiation to treat prostate cancer and have seen any increase in your PSA level, talk to your referring clinician about Axumin PET/CT. Because knowing is the first step in healing.