Woman's 'cancerous' lumps turn out to be a reaction caused by 15-year-old tattoo

(Representational image)

New Delhi: Noticing a couple of lumps under her arm, a 30-year-old woman feared the worst and rushed to the hospital.

After giving her a thorough check-up and a scan, doctors found lymph nodes in her chest, near her lungs and diagnosed her with a rare cancer type – lymphoma, that attacks the lymphatic system, which is responsible for removing toxins and other waste from the body.

However, doctors also found it strange that she showed no symptoms like fever or night sweats, except for a few headaches.

They advised her to go in for surgery to remove the lymph nodes, but they never expected to find out what they did.

When surgeons removed one of the enlarged nodes from the woman's armpit, they discovered a collection of immune cells that were filled with dark coloring – the result of a tattoo she got 15 years prior.

In a case report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the authors wrote that the 30-year-old woman, who was not identified, most likely had a hypersensitive reaction to ink from tattoos, the Washington Post said.

The authors wrote in their findings that tattoos can be linked to “acute complications, such as pain, infection and hypersensitivity” as well as enlarged lymph nodes that may “masquerade as malignant disease.”

The study notes: "We concluded that the diagnosis was granulomatous lymphadenitis, which was probably a hypersensitivity reaction to tattoo pigment."

The woman in question had two tattoos, a large one covering her back – which had been done 15 years before – and a smaller, newer one on her arm, done some time within the last three years.

Eventually, and strangely enough, it turned out to be the large, older tattoo that was causing the emergence of the lumps – which doctors said were 'presenting as lymphoma '.