HAIR FOLLICLES ON ICE

[Susan Beausang]

The phone lines at Penguin Cold Caps are ringing off the hook, or in business speak, “we are currently experiencing a high volume of calls due to our appearance on Good Morning America”. While the
producer/supplier of the cold caps was not named in the GMA story,
the idea that an icy head cap might prevent chemotherapy-induced hair
loss seems to have sent some women running for the phone.

While still in clinical trials and little known in the United States, chemotherapy cold caps have been more widely used and studied in Europe. The headgear is stored at temperatures well below freezing and
worn before, during and after chemotherapy sessions. The freezing
temperature constricts the blood vessels supplying blood to the hair
follicles, thereby limiting the ability of the follicles to absorb the
chemotherapy drugs.

“You essentially put the hair follicles in hibernation,” said Shirley Billigmeier, breast cancer survivor and co-founder of The Rapunzel Project, a non-profit with a mission to increase American women’s access to cold caps. “The minute you have an option, your outlook switches,” said
Billigmeier.

Patients need to rent the cold caps from the manufacturer, usually through a hospital intermediary. During chemotherapy, the caps are changed approximately every 30 minutes in order to maintain the optimal
temperature of 22 degrees below zero Farenheit. It takes either a
biomedical freezer or about 159 pounds of dry ice to maintain the caps
at that temperature. Only a couple of hospitals in the U.S. currently
have biomedical freezers.

Billigmeier had to get through her first chemotherapy and cold cap treatment with coolers of dry ice and a team of supporters. With seven family members and friends on hand to carry coolers and change the caps,
Billigmeier got through her first treatment and returned for a second
with a full head of hair. Friends and supporters of Billigmeier
ultimately raised the funding to purchase a biomedical freezer for Abbot
Northwestern, the Minnesota hospital where she was being treated. The
cold caps go on about an hour before treatment and stay on for four
hours following treatment, so cold cap users are looking at long days of
treatment with no guarantee that the caps will work.

After six rounds of chemotherapy and cold caps, Billigmeier still had a full head of hair. The freezer she helped to raise funds for at Abbot Northwestern had already been used by about a half-dozen women as
of last spring, according to an April 2010 article that appeared in the
Minnesota Sun newspaper.

While there has been little to no research in the United States exploring the effectiveness or potential side effects of cold cap treatments, there was reportedly a 1990 study conducted in France that
found them to be 90 percent effective in preventing hair loss. While
some doctors are open to the idea if it helps their patients accept
their prescribed chemotherapy regimen, cold cap treatments are not
deemed safe for all cancer patients. Breast cancer is expected to pose
little risk of blood borne cancer cells that could travel to the scalp,
so preventing chemo drugs from reaching blood vessels in the scalp is
perceived to be safe.

Hair loss is often one of, if not THE most devastating side effects for women undergoing cancer treatment. It is not unheard of for a woman to refuse a prescribed chemotherapy regimen due to her fear of hair
loss. One of the major reasons that hair loss is such a devastating
side effect is that it denies a woman the ability to keep her cancer
diagnosis private is she so chooses. With this in mind, it is not hard
to understand why some women may go to great trouble and expense to keep
their hair.

Cancer diagnoses, hair loss, health and emotional well-being are all very personal themes. Each woman’s needs and responses to her treatment are her own. Even among those women who would like to be able to go to
any length to save their hair from chemotherapy, the cost may be
prohibitive. The fixed monthly rental cost of a Penguin Cold Cap is
$429, along with a refundable $600 initial deposit. If your hospital
does not have a biomedical freezer, then you will need a lot of coolers,
a whole lot of dry ice, and a team to help you get the caps on and off
quickly and smoothly enough that the chemo drugs do not make it to your
scalp in the interim. According to The Rapunzel Project’s website, the
caps are quite cold for the first 5 minutes after the new cap is
applied, and the discomfort dissipates after that.

If you’ve never had cancer, never faced that kind of fear for your life and well-being, cold caps may sound like an automatic must-have. Having faced that fear of death by cancer, I personally think my fear of
anything that prevents chemotherapy from circulating in my blood
vessels would trump my fear of hair loss. It’s all about killing the
cancer in my mind, as devastating as hair loss is. What about you?
Would you put your follicles on ice to save your hair?

Susan Beausang, 4Women.com

twitter.com/thebeaubeau