Chemo 'cold caps' help patients keep hair, but could lead to bigger health risks

BOISE, Idaho (KBOI) — New studies have found that cooling caps can help cancer patients keep their hair through chemotherapy treatment, however, this type of treatment comes with risks that Idaho hospitals and some patients aren't willing to take.

"So this morning I'm getting my fourth chemo treatment," said Kirsten Parker, a patient at St. Luke's Mountain States Tumor Institute (MSTI).

Parker is battling breast cancer. After she was diagnosed with cancer, she strongly considered buying a cooling cap to try to keep her hair.

"Before I started chemo, I just had a couple of friends who were like immediately, 'Oh my god you gotta do this, this is amazing, you can keep your hair,'" Parker said.

Cooling caps work by reducing the temperature of your scalp during chemo.

That reduces the blood flow to hair follicles, which can prevent chemotherapy from targeting your hair.

One new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows half of the women participants kept at least 50 percent of their hair with this type of treatment. A second study showed two-thirds kept their hair.

However, Dr. Dan Zuckerman at St. Luke's MSTI says in the past, devices like this have left patients' heads unprotected from cancer.

"But what would happen is, they would- years or sometimes even decades later, the cancer, the breast cancer, would come back and manifest as scalp metastasis, and once that happens that's unfortunately an incurable situation," Zuckerman said.

There's only one FDA cleared cold cap and Idaho hospitals do not offer them. There are non-FDA cleared caps that patients can buy but, hospitals like St. Luke's do not allow them. The main reason being that there isn't enough long-term research on the caps but, there are also short-term risks.

"Many patients express that it's very cold obviously, as you can imagine it's like a brain freeze, and it can cause headaches and things like that; there is a risk of frost bite for those," said Linda Penwarden, an oncology clinical nurse specialist at MSTI.

Penwarden says some caps can get down to about -20 degrees. The non-FDA cleared caps also require about 70 pounds of dry ice to work, a hazard St. Luke's can't take.

Penwarden is a cancer survivor herself. She says that it's important to note that in the new studies, the patients who tested weren't all taking medications that would have necessarily caused hair loss in the first place.

She also points out that though a cold cap could help patients keep some of their head hair, it would not prevent hair loss from eyebrows or eyelashes.

Doctors say the biggest concern is the chance of cancer spreading to a patient's head. It's a risk Parker isn't willing to take.

"You're eliminating a spot, a rather critical spot, so it just wasn't worth it to me," Parker said.

St. Luke's does offer free cosmetology classes for patients going through breast cancer, volunteers help patients learn how to do things like put on a wig.

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