Doctors were sure it was cancer . . .

‘Ninety-nine times out of 100, (enlarged nodes) will be lymphoma,’ but it was just a reaction to a tattoo

Her symptoms pointed to cancer.

She had sought medical attention for small lumps under her arms, but doctors in Australia discovered it was worse than that — enlarged lymph nodes were also in her chest and in the roots of her lungs.

They suspected it was lymphoma, a type of cancer that attacks the lymphatic system, which removes toxins and other waste from the body.

“Ninety-nine times out of 100, (this) will be lymphoma,” one of the woman’s doctors, Christian Bryant, told CNN. But when surgeons removed one of the enlarged nodes from the woman’s armpit, they discovered something else entirely — a collection of immune cells that were filled with dark colouring.

The diagnosis? It was not cancer.

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 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 doctors in Australia knew something had triggered the woman’s immune system to respond — but they did not know what, or why the reaction had taken 15 years since she got her first tattoo, said Bryant, a hematologist at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney.

The woman had noticed the lumps under her arms during a self-examination, about two weeks before she went to the clinic for evaluation.

The case report, published Monday, said she did not have a fever, night sweats, trouble breathing or unexplained weight loss — all of which are symptoms of lymphoma.

But she did have one of the most telling signs of the disease: swollen lymph nodes.

In this case, however, it was simply thought to be tattoo ink: For 15 years, the woman had a black-ink tattoo covering her back, and she later added one on her shoulder. She told doctors that her tattoos would sometimes become itchy and swollen, but that her skin would then return to normal.