In prostate cancer, as in life, you roll the dice.
In craps, 3+3 is called a hard six. It s hard because you can only win if you repeat with a combination of 3+3. Any other sixes you roll 4+2, 5+1 are losers.
Gleason 3+3 is a hard six in prostate cancer. It is the lowest grade cancer in the traditional Gleason scoring system. Still, to the eye of a pathologist, a Gleason 6 looks like a malignancy.
Now, a few experts are questioning whether this hard six is a cancer at all. Some urologists see a Gleason 6 as a noncancerous growth that has the potential to be invasive, but most likely will never spread to other organs or end up killing a man.