(WXYZ) – While enlarged lymph nodes are a totally normal and harmless response to a vaccine. They caused some confusion during the COVID immunization process. Especially for women.
“People started getting vaccinated in December and we were taking our health care workers for their mammograms and I was like, ‘Wow, this person has really enlarged lymph nodes,'” said Dr. Connie Lehman, director of breast imaging. at Massachusetts General Hospital. in Boston.
On a mammogram, an enlarged lymph node appears as white spots. This is also what doctors see when a cancerous tumor spreads. Thus, establishing this link between the vaccine and the lymph nodes was important to prevent what Lehman refers to as “false-positive.”
“We’ve reported this in mammography centers before, but not far from the level we’ve seen with the COVID vaccine. We think this is because the COVID vaccine creates a very strong immune response,” said Lehman, who has written two papers on the subject , hoping to get the word out so as to avoid unnecessary “scares” and unnecessary anxiety and testing costs.
“We want to find cancer early when it can be treated and cured – we also don’t want to bring patients back for additional imaging, biopsies, for treatment, when they don’t actually have cancer,” said Lehman, who wrote two papers on the link between vaccines and lymph nodes.
“This is a normal inflammatory response to health, so we want to calm the anxiety,” she said.
But does this mean that women should blow off their mammograms to avoid confusion? Absolutely not.
While a simple solution might seem to recommend that women be monitored 4-6 weeks after the second vaccine – once the swelling should go away – Lehman points out that not all women have the flexibility, time or resources to reorganize. And the lack of screening can be more harmful.
In the year of the COVID pandemic, the US recorded the lowest number of mammography screenings – and the delayed advanced diagnosis of breast cancer is therefore feared.
“We will see more breast cancer deaths from COVID than we will ever see in the United States – 100%,” Lehman said, adding later. It is almost impossible to avoid this, unless we have a full, full effort to bring women back for mammography screening.
Instead of rescheduling a screening, Lehman said you just need to make sure your healthcare provider knows you were vaccinated and on what arm so they can take that into account during screening.
“The message could not be clearer, get vaccinated as soon as possible, the second message is not to skip screening mammography,” she said.
It is suggested that women between the ages of 50 and 74 participate in mammography screenings every one to two years.