CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) – Because of a side effect of the newly discovered COVID-19 vaccine, doctors now recommend that women wait to have their mammograms regularly scheduled until weeks after receiving both doses.
A few days after receiving her final COVID-19 vaccine, Tara Kettlewell, an ultrasound supervisor at Roper St. Francis, said she noticed a worrying pain near the side of her breast and armpit.
“I received my second vaccine last Saturday,” said Kettlewell. “You could see a fullness and swelling. A lot of pain to the point of relaxing my arm beside me. “
For some, swollen lymph nodes, also known as axillary adenopathy, can be considered a symptom of breast cancer.
“We pay attention to adenopathy as a potential sign of breast cancer,” said doctor Amy Deaton of Roper St. Francis. “It is exactly what your body does when it is challenged. So, what we have to do when we see this is that we have to work on it. “
But in Kettlewell’s case, the swelling actually came as a side effect of the vaccine she just received.
“I hadn’t seen where the lymph nodes were so inflamed, so it was just one of those things that I was like, oh, so it really happens,” said Kettlewell.
Deaton said the hospital is seeing more women coming up with the same problem, confusing the side effect with a symptom of breast cancer.
“So it creates a considerable amount of anxiety and extra cost to design something that is in all likelihood a benign process expected after a vaccine injection,” said Deaton.
Since the side effect can result in abnormal mammograms, the Society of Breast Imaging recommends that women schedule their regular exams before or 4 to 6 weeks after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
“As long as they arrive for the screening mammogram at the appropriate time before or after the vaccine, we can assume that anything we see after that point would be something we would need to work on,” said Deaton.
Kettlewell said that if it weren’t for her job, she would never know that her pain was really coming from the vaccine.
“However, for someone who is not familiar with this situation, it could be something that would alarm them,” said Kettlewell. “I definitely think more people need to know about this until our radiologist sends us more information about it, we were not aware.”
However, Deaton says that women who are having other breast cancer symptoms or concerns are yet to come for examination.
“If patients are diagnosed and are having problems, as if they have a mass, we do not recommend waiting for this to work,” said Deaton. “So, this relates purely to screening mammography.”
The Society of Breast Imaging says that lymph nodes rarely swell after other injections like the flu vaccine, but the side effect is seen at higher rates after doses of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19.
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