A woman has had her lymph nodes removed incorrectly as a result of uterine cancer. Doctors took the ink from his tattoos for tumor cells.
This is one of the unsuspected effects of tattooing: it can distort medical diagnoses. Review Obstetrics & Gynecology echoes a clinical case that occurred in a Californian hospital, in the United States, in a 32-year-old woman treated for uterine cancer.
During a consultation to monitor the progression of her “disease”, the patient had to undergo a PET scan. This test involves injecting FDG (fluoro-deoxy-glucose) into the body, a radioactive product that binds to tumor or inflammatory cells.
40 lymph nodes removed for nothing
The examination then reveals two zones of two centimeters in diameter, on each side of the lower abdomen of the patient. Doctors conclude that cancer cells migrate to lymph nodes. Located in the elbows, groin, abdomen and chest, neck and armpits, these nodes have a key role in the functioning of the immune system, since they produce antibodies to fight against infections.
Doctors fear the worst: the formation of two tumors. They go to great lengths and decide to carry out surgery, during which they remove forty lymph nodes, which they assume are affected by cancer cells. Except that after the ablation, the analysis reveals the total absence of tumor cells, and the presence of an unexpected element on the lymph nodes: tattoo ink, which falsified the entire diagnosis.
“In the case of permanent tattoos, the colored pigments can migrate through the lymphatic vessels into the lymph nodes,” writes the doctor who operated on this patient. It is essential that tattooed patients notify doctors even before the start of treatment, to avoid such mistakes! “
“Black ganglia”
Indeed, the patient had twelve colored tattoos on the leg. The practitioner did not make the connection from the first moments. However, this scenario would be relatively common, precise to Why actor Dr Jean-Luc Rigon, general secretary of the National Syndicate of Dermatologists-Venereologists. “It is very common to end up with black nodes! he explains. In these cases, there is a good chance that it is melanoma. The only way to find out is to perform a biopsy ”.
In fact, the removal of the forty nodes could have been avoided by analyzing just one of them. But beyond the medical blunder, that more than a seasoned doctor could have made, this clinical study recalls that no tattoo is harmless, in particular because the inks migrate, like any external element which one introduces in his organism.
“We do not know the fate of inks in the body”
“It is all the more alarming that we do not know anything about what is in tattoo inks,” says Jean-Luc Rigon. Some studies have shown the presence of tar derivatives… These can be the same inks intended to color car dashboards or the plastics in suitcases! “. The body “cleans up” – hence the fact that tattoos fade over time. “But in reality, we do not know the fate of inks in our body”, concludes the dermatologist.
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