Image scans showed the ‘growth’ had spread.
By Raif Karerat
BENGALURU: When a California woman went in for a body image scan to assess her cervical cancer, doctors noticed abnormalities suggesting the cancer had spread. As it turned out, they were a bit off the mark: the bright spots on the readouts were in fact caused by something infinitely more innocuous: the woman’s tattoos.
The unidentified 32-year-old woman “lit up” during the course of a full-body image scan in November 2012, leading doctors to believe her cancer had spread, according to Live Science.
It only after the mother of four had her uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and pelvic lymph nodes removed that doctors finally became cognizant of the fact that the bright spots in her tests were her tattoos.
“Those lymph nodes that were lighting up brightly on the PET scan were doing so because of the tattoo pigment that was in the lymph nodes,” said researcher Dr. Ramez Eskander, who treated the woman.
Her case was notable enough to be published Monday in the journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
“We what we wanted to do educate physicians, patients, families,” Eskander told CBS Los Angeles. “When there is a PET scan that shows a bright lymph node, if a patient has significant tattoos or body art, than you have to be cognizant that these might be false positives.”
The woman, who had more than 14 tattoos on her legs, was injected with a radioactive tracer that makes tumors appear as bright spots on the scan, reported to Live Science.
“She was thrilled to share her story with everyone, but she never indicated she regretted the tattoos,” Eskander said.