A temporary side effect from the COVID-19 vaccines is leading to breast cancer scares.
Women are being told to hold off on routine mammograms if they just received a first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
It's because a temporary side-effect can include swollen lymph nodes around the armpits, which could be misread as a possible sign of breast cancer if it turns up on a mammogram.
Doctor Laura Esserman is a breast cancer surgeon at UC San Francisco Medical Center and she tells CBS she's concerned this could lead to people getting biopsies that they don’t need.
"So we want to be careful not to overreact to that information. We don't want to mess a critically important finding but I think it's all confounded by the vaccine," she says.
Esserman says having swollen lymph nodes after a vaccine shot is actually a good thing.
The Society for Breast Imaging says routine mammogram's should be done either before the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine or four-to-six weeks after the second dose.
