Chemotherapy Hair Loss May Be Eradicated by Cold Cap Device

About 65% of patients who undergo chemotherapy radiation treatment face hair loss

Dec 2010

An experimental cold cap has the potential to eliminate hair loss in chemotherapy patients.

The “DigniCap,” a tightly-fitting, mechanical cap worn during chemotherapy, uses a circulating cooling gel that chills hair follicles, restricting the amount of chemotherapy they absorb.

About 65% of patients who undergo chemotherapy radiation treatment face hair loss, and for some, it can be a source of devastating self-consciousness.

47-year-old breast cancer patient Heather Millar, who blogs about her experience with cancer on “My Left Breast,” says she broke down when she realized she would lose her hair.

“The hair, it’s not the most important thing, but it’s such a stigma of cancer. The minute you’re wearing a scarf or something, it makes social interactions weird,” Millar said, according to MSNBC.

The Swedish-made DigniCap will soon undergo an FDA trial to assess its effectiveness and safety. Researchers will monitor 100 patients whose breast cancer is still in the early stages.

The caps cool the scalp to -30 Celsius, causing blood vessels around the hair follicles to contract. This way, the follicles absorb less chemo.

Some medical experts argue that the caps put patients at risk of retaining cancer cells in the scalp by blocking the chemo drugs from that area.

But so far, incidence of scalp cancer has been low. One study followed 1,400 patients for between five and nine years and found only 10 cases of scalp cancer, New York Daily News reports.

Other experts, including Oncology Nursing Society spokesperson Marlon Garzo Saria, fear the devices could give rise to issues in the brain.

“There is a concern that it prevents chemotherapy from reaching cancer cells that may be present in sanctuary sites in the brain,” Saria told New York Daily News. “Until we can find clear evidence that this is not so, I would rather err on the side of caution and presume that the risk of cancer recurrence outweighs the benefits of preventing hair loss in patients receiving chemotherapy.”

If the caps receive FDA approval, they could solve a serious issue for the 225,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year.

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