Grade 1: The cancerous cells look a lot like normal cells.
Grades 2-4: Cancerous cells in the tissue look less like normal cells.
Grade 5: Cancerous cells look very abnormal.
Each area of prostate cancer may have a different grade, so pathologists pick the two areas that make up most of the cancer. They add the two areas’ grades to come up with a Gleason score.
For example, if the largest area with cancer is Grade 3 and the next largest area is Grade 5, the Gleason score is 8. Any area with a combined Gleason score of 6 or higher is considered cancerous.
What’s a normal Gleason score?
Your Gleason score doesn’t rank potential ranges like ranges set for elevated PSA (prostate-specific antigen) tests. Instead, providers break Gleason scores into three categories:
Gleason 6: The cells look like healthy cells, which is called well differentiated.
Gleason 7: The cells look somewhat like healthy cells, which is called moderately differentiated.
Gleason 8, 9 or 10: The cells look very different from healthy cells, which is called poorly differentiated or undifferentiated.
They said that the cancer can be treated effectively with hormone treatment. I’m skeptical only because he’s so much older. Doesn’t cancer treatment make you sick also in the process ?
I don’t think for prostate treatment necessarily does. In Biden’s case, he’s been declining for years - it seems like mortal disease comes on the heels of major cognitive decline - sadly I don’t think he’s going to live much longer, and it won’t be prostate cancer that gets him.
Also, most men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough. The approach has changed in recent years, to only treat if it’s growing too fast or you get it very young (because it normally grows so slowly you’ll die of old age first).
I forget - wasn’t there a change to the scoring system recently (last 10 years?) because Gleason was too ambiguous, or was Gleason the new model to address the scoring limitations?
From Clevelandclinic.org:
Each area of prostate cancer may have a different grade, so pathologists pick the two areas that make up most of the cancer. They add the two areas’ grades to come up with a Gleason score.
For example, if the largest area with cancer is Grade 3 and the next largest area is Grade 5, the Gleason score is 8. Any area with a combined Gleason score of 6 or higher is considered cancerous.
What’s a normal Gleason score?
Your Gleason score doesn’t rank potential ranges like ranges set for elevated PSA (prostate-specific antigen) tests. Instead, providers break Gleason scores into three categories:
They said that the cancer can be treated effectively with hormone treatment. I’m skeptical only because he’s so much older. Doesn’t cancer treatment make you sick also in the process ?
I don’t think for prostate treatment necessarily does. In Biden’s case, he’s been declining for years - it seems like mortal disease comes on the heels of major cognitive decline - sadly I don’t think he’s going to live much longer, and it won’t be prostate cancer that gets him.
Also, most men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough. The approach has changed in recent years, to only treat if it’s growing too fast or you get it very young (because it normally grows so slowly you’ll die of old age first).
Unfortunately I agree. I don’t think he’ll be here much longer… i hope he gets through it, but my gut is telling me something else…
I forget - wasn’t there a change to the scoring system recently (last 10 years?) because Gleason was too ambiguous, or was Gleason the new model to address the scoring limitations?