NASHVILLE, Tenn. — If you received a COVID-19 vaccine, doctors say you may want to wait to get a mammogram.
Vanderbilt University doctors say a cancerous circle may appear after an exam. They say it's not cancer, but it is a swollen lymph node.
"I was trying to schedule my yearly stuff," Renee Geltzer said.
Geltzer said she postponed many of her doctor appointments last year due to the pandemic, including her annual mammogram.
"I do it every year to the date," she says.
But this year, Geltzer said she's pushing hers back after she got the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine – advice she heard from a friend.
"She had heard some information about when you get your mammogram after your COVID-19 shot that there could be things shown up," Geltzer said.
Dr. Reagan Leverett is a radiologist with a subspecialty in breast imaging at Vanderbilt. She says she's seen many of these false cancer cases or a swollen lymph node that appears to be cancerous.
"When you get the vaccine, these can actually become enlarged in the same arm that you acquired the vaccine," Dr. Leverett said.
She said this is what your body is expected to do. Your body has lymph nodes all over it and when they swell, that's their immune response to the vaccine.
"When I read mammograms, I've been calling a number of people back," Dr. Leverett said.
When she calls these patients and tells them to return for another screening in two to three months. If a patient had a vaccine shot and is scheduled for a mammogram, she recommended that person wait four to six weeks.
"I would rather wait than to have it done and to have something show up and have it be false and then have to go back again," Geltzer said. "It's not a fun activity."
Doctors said the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are showing these side effects. Johnson and Johnson's vaccine side effects on mammogram screenings are still uncertain since it hasn't been distributed widely enough yet.