can a ct scan without contrast miss prostate cancer?

[wag537]

Hi. My father is a 63 yr old man. He had a stoke in 1994, triple bypass in 2005 and a renal stent in 2005. He has high blood pressure and kidney disease. In January of this year, he begin to experience severe back pain and went to the ER in February. His kidney doc was called in and a ct was performed without contrast due to his kidney problems. Unfortunately they found an illiac aneurysm which was repaired in March. He went to the ER three more times for the back pain and constipation with no diagnosis, just pain meds and/or meds for muscle spasms. He went to an ortho in late April and a bone scan was performed. Oh, about three days earlier his lost his ability to walk. The bone scan showed hotspots so he went to a different hospital for a biopsy. Whatever test this hospital did, my dad was rushed into surgery to remove a tumor on his spine. Yep. Prostate cancer metasticized to the bone in serveral places. He is on hormone therapy, Casadex and Lupron once a month. My sisters and I are livid that this wasn't discovered during one of the four ER visits and perhaps we could have avoided the paralysis. I'd like your opinion on how long this cancer has been growing. Also, should his colonoscopy have found the prostate cancer? One more question..Could it be that the cancer was missed on the CT scan because it was done without contrast? Any info you give me will be so so helpful.
Thank you,
Leslie N.

[Ash Tewari, MD, M.Ch.]

With the information you have given, it is almost impossible to answer most of your questions, with a degree of certainty, that would be of significant use.

It would be useful to remember that statistics applies to a population, not necessarily to the individual- if i gave you the tumor doubling time of prostate cancers commonly seen, it does not mean that your father had the same doubling time........and so on.