Scalp cooling proved to be successful in the prevention of alopecia in >7000 patients with solid tumors

Hair loss is a frequently occurring and stigmatizing side effect of chemotherapy. Worldwide scalp cooling is being introduced to prevent chemotherapy-induced alopecia (CIA). In the Netherlands scalp cooling is implemented in many hospitals since 2005.

From 2006–2017, data have been collected in a prospective, longitudinal registry. Patients with all types of solid tumors, with all stages of disease, from all ages and both sexes could participate, if they received a chemotherapy that induced severe hair loss. The hospitals were free to offer scalp cooling to their patients according to their local protocols on cooling and infusion time of the drugs. Patients were eligible for evaluation of hair loss after they received at least 2 cycles of chemotherapy or if they ceased scalp cooling because of severe hair loss after the first cycle. Data will be presented using descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analysis to explore determinants of scalp cooling efficacy.

Preliminary results show data of 7,378 patients from 68 hospital locations of whom 75% had breast and 8% prostate cancer. Most patients (61%) were treated in the adjuvant setting. In general, pre-infusion cooling time was 30 minutes and post infusion cooling time 90 minutes. An exception was for docetaxel, for which 20 minutes post infusion cooling time was used in recent years. Scalp cooling efficacy varied from above 80% for taxanes monotherapy to below 10% for the combination of docetaxel, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide (TAC). Results from the regression analyses will be presented at the conference.

Scalp cooling proved to be successful for most types of chemotherapy causing CIA.