Here’s what women should know about mammograms and COVID-19 vaccine

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Charlotte woman learned the hard way that doctors recommend women should wait several weeks after getting the COVID-19 vaccine to get a mammogram.

Amelia Moore drove almost an hour to her annual mammogram appointment.

She told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke that once a nurse took her back into a room, she asked Moore if she had gotten the COVID-19 vaccination.

Moore told the nurse she had received her first dose and that’s when the nurse informed her that she should wait at least a month after getting her second dose to come back for her mammogram.

“I was very surprised. I was really livid,” she said. “If I had known that, I would not have even scheduled my appointment so soon. I would have waited.”

Stoogenke contacted Dr. Ryan Shelton with Tryon Medical Partners to find out if there is a recommended wait period.

“When our body is fighting something off, whether it’s infection or mounting the immune response to the COVID vaccine, our lymph nodes can swell or enlarge a little bit ...” he said.

“They’re kind of doing their job, but on a mammogram, that could indicate perhaps they are enlarged because of potentially breast cancer,” he explained.

Shelton along with Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Society of Breast Imaging all suggest waiting.

“I would wait four to six weeks after having that final dose of the COVID vaccine just to help minimize the risk of any false positive mammogram result that could lead to more potentially unnecessary testing,” Shelton said.

“Hopefully this will reach a lot of people out there that don’t know,” Moore said. “It’s good to know than to not know, and that’s something that I didn’t know.”

While the recommended wait period applies to routine mammograms, medical professionals suggest that if your doctor finds a lump or something else suspicious, patients should not wait to have the procedure done.

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