One of the worst aspects of chemotherapy is hair-loss. In fact, I’ve had several friends who went through chemo and down to one; each of them bravely shaved their heads (one, with a champagne party afterwards) before starting treatment, with the idea that cancer wasn’t going to get them.
But for those who don’t want to shave their heads, or wear a wig, or see strands of hair swirl down the shower drain, there may now be a way to keep it on your head, for good.
Would you believe that 8 percent of potential patients refuse chemotherapy because they don’t want to be seen as a person to be pitied? Now, a Connecticut nurse says she has found a natural and non-invasive way to protect against chemotherapy hair loss, according to a press release.
Called “cold caps,” the nurse, laser therapy technician and nuclear medicine technologist, Denise Rosenkrantz and her businessman husband Stuart, developed “Cold Cap Therapy” after seeing firsthand the suffering caused by hair-loss from chemotherapy.
I was actually very lucky as a cancer patient, never having to go through chemo. But I, too, was terrified before I knew whether or not it would be recommended, of the thought of staring at myself in the mirror without my thick dark locks of hair.
A treatment actually first used in Europe in the mid-‘90s, Cold Cap Therapy has helped over 85 percent of the thousands of patients who used it to keep their hair, according to the press release. Rosenkrantz went on to find Cold Cap Therapy in the European Journal of Cancer. Well over a thousand cancer patients in the U.S have successfully used cold cap therapy in the last few years, according to the Rapunzel Project, an organization started by two breast cancer survivors who offer advice and counsel to other patients.
Cold Capping cools hair follicles, which helps to preserve and protect them from the chemotherapy toxins that would otherwise cause hair loss. Patients wear a freshly chilled cap with a temperature down to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit, every 30 minutes for seven long hours or however long their chemo takes.
"We provide a complete service for cancer patients," Rosenkrantz said in the press release. "On the days that chemotherapy is scheduled, we will bring along the prepared caps already frozen and ready to go. One of our technicians will teach the patient how to use the system and change the caps every 25 to 30 minutes, keeping the hair follicles frozen and protected from the chemotherapy."
Unfortunately, the treatment is not for everyone. The type of cancer, chemicals used in the chemotherapy and infusion protocols all have an impact on the success of the Cold Cap Treatment, though it has been particularly effective in preventing hair loss in breast cancer sufferers, Rosenkrantz said.
"By enabling people to keep their hair, it makes them feel less vulnerable, less of a patient and more of a survivor. I only wish we'd heard of this when the Europeans did,” Rosenkrantz said in the press release.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
