THURSDAY, Feb. 11, 2021 (HealthDay Information) — One facet impact of COVID-19 vaccination is creating undue concern amongst girls, inflicting them to fret that they could have breast cancer.
Each the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may cause lymph nodes to swell, notably these within the armpit on the facet the place the shot was obtained, specialists say.
Some girls are feeling these armpit lymph nodes and mistaking them for breast lumps, in response to a current report.
Additional, these swollen lymph nodes can present up in a mammogram even when girls cannot really feel them. That prompted the Society of Breast Imaging to advocate that girls postpone any mammography scheduled inside 4 weeks after their ultimate COVID-19 shot.
Put up-vaccine lymph node swelling is widespread and innocent, however docs are involved it might trigger undue concern amongst girls. It might additionally set off a false optimistic on a mammogram, upping the necessity for pointless additional testing, mentioned Dr. Brett Parkinson, medical director of Intermountain Medical Heart Breast Care Heart in Murray, Utah.
“It’s totally uncommon within the regular screening inhabitants to see enlarged lymph nodes. We solely see it about 0.2% to 0.4% of the time,” Parkinson mentioned.
“So after we see it, it does increase a crimson flag, as a result of when that sort of lymph node swelling is current, about 50% of the time, it could possibly characterize both a metastatic breast most cancers that has gone from the breast to the lymph node below the arm, or leukemia or lymphoma,” he added.
When docs see this, they need the affected person to return. “We do further testing, often ultrasound, and sometimes we are going to do a biopsy to rule out a kind of malignancies,” Parkinson mentioned.
Additional screening
He famous that about 16% of medical trial sufferers had enlarged lymph nodes after their second shot of the Moderna vaccine, and the Pfizer vaccine produced the same impact.
“I truly had a palpable axillary [armpit] lymph node following my vaccination,” Parkinson mentioned. “It occurs in males as effectively.”
A collection of case stories printed on-line just lately within the journal Medical Imaging detailed 4 girls who acquired the COVID-19 vaccine after which sought breast screening.