A PSA in this context is not a Public Service Announcement, it's Prostate Specific Antigen. It's a blood test and does not require any dropping of pants or gloved hands. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is a protein produced by the prostate gland. The prostate will produce this antigen for a number of reasons, but one is the presence of prostate cancer. This means that you may have some level of PSA in your blood, but it doesn't mean you have definitely have cancer - just that you might have cancer.
National Cancer Institute : PSA Questions and Answers
My experience was this:
The first PSA test came back at 7.6. Did the antibiotics, waited and re-tested. This second PSA test included a deeper test - the "free PSA %". The doc explained it to me this way: The antigen produced by the prostate tends to "latch" onto cancer cells. If you have an elevated PSA value, but most of it is floating around in your blood "free", then the probability of cancer is greatly reduced. However, if most of it is "attached" to something (i.e. not "free"), then that increases the probability of cancer and a biopsy is needed to confirm. My second PSA panel came back with a PSA of 7.4 and 14% free. In my case, it was the 14% that was the red flag and why the doctor ordered the biopsy.
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