EFFICACY OF UTILIZING SCALP COOLING ON CONTROLLING ALOPECIA FOR FEMALE PATIENTS UNDERGOING ADJUVANT CHEMOTHERAPY

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: Alopecia is a distressing side effect for patients undergoing chemotherapy and occasionally can lead to refusal of treatment. Scalp cooling is a method of preventing chemotherapy-induced alopecia. The aim of study: to determine the efficacy of utilizing scalp cooling on controlling alopecia for female pa-tients undergoing adjuvant chemo-therapy. Materials and methods: The study design used was a quasi-experimental research design. A purposive sample of 60 adult female patients, at the On-cology center in Ain Shams University their age ranged 18-60 years old, with cancer and scheduled to be treated with adjuvant chemotherapy for the first time after curative surgery who met the inclusion criteria it will be divided randomly 30 subjects in study group and 30 subjects in control group, the study group were received scalp cooling while they receiving their chemotherapy cycle while the control group received the routine hospital care. 2 tools used including structure interview questionnaire and physiolog-ic measurement tool for hair loss. The results of this study: Revealed that there is good hair preservation by 86.7% in the study group (scalp cool-ing group (SCG)) compared to 16.7% in the control group where P=0.000. Conclusion: The scalp cooling is effec-tive in the prevention of chemotherapy induced alopecia in cancer patient. Recommendation: The scalp cooling is effective and should be applied for cancer patient during chemotherapy cycles thus the scalp cooling system should be available in the governmen-tal hospitals and the women with can-cer who take adjuvant chemotherapy should be encouraged to use scalp cooling to reduce total alopecia. Fur-ther psychological, clinical and biolog-ical research is needed to improve the effect, tolerance, time and side effect of the cooling procedure.