Abstract
As the administration of COVID-19 vaccines continues to increase, so too does awareness of the associated ipsilateral axillary lymphadenopathy. This has created a diagnostic challenge in the field of radiology, in particular among patients with cancer, as post-vaccination reactive adenopathy has been reported to be mistakenly interpreted as malignancy. As radiology departments improve their protocols for obtaining vaccine-related patient history, and radiologists become acclimated to attributing axillary lymphadenopathy to recent COVID-19 vaccination, there is a risk of the pendulum swinging too far and under-diagnosing true oncologic disease. This report describes an otherwise healthy 53-year-old man who presented with discomfort due to ipsilateral axillary lymphadenopathy shortly after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. Fine needle aspiration performed within 2 months of receiving the vaccine revealed metastatic melanoma and subsequent 18F-FDG PET/CT demonstrated intensely avid axillary and supraclavicular adenopathy without visualization of a primary lesion. This case serves as a cautionary report to remind clinicians to remain suspicious of possible underlying malignancy with the presence of axillary adenopathy, despite a history of recent COVID-19 vaccination.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 878-880 |
Number of pages | 3 |
Journal | Radiology Case Reports |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2022 |
Keywords
- COVID-19
- COVID-19 vaccine
- Lymphadenopathy
- PET/CT
- SARS-CoV2
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging