Snippet from the article:
A handful of San Francisco breast cancer patients are donning frigid skullcaps to test a device designed to keep hair tightly rooted during chemotherapy. Researchers hope the study, run by UC San Francisco and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., will eventually lead to Food and Drug Administration approval for the chilly caps.
There is now no way to hang on to one’s tresses during chemo for any kind of cancer, says study leader Hope Rugo, an oncologist at UCSF. The prospect of baldness is distressing to many patients, particularly women. Some choose a less-drastic drug regimen more likely to leave hair follicles alone, potentially at the cost of getting the best possible treatment. It’s a fact that women frequently make treatment decisions based on risk to their locks, says Rugo’s colleague Michelle Melisko, another oncologist investigating scalp-cooling systems.
The caps’ low temperature, 41 degrees Fahrenheit, keeps poisonous chemotherapy drugs out of the hair follicles. But some doctors worry that in so doing, it makes it more likely that cancer will take root in the scalp.
Read the full story at the LA Times — Cooling caps tested to help cancer patients keep hair
Freezing the scalp to prevent chemo-related hair loss has been around for 30 or more years, though it doesn’t work for everyone and most people will still see some loss.
On the bright side, the article points out that “the results from 53 studies using various devices and methods were mostly positive“.
I believe there is confusion with respect to the NHI surgical fees. That pricing applies to traditional strip surgeries performed by us in our Los Angeles office. The standard fee is $6 per graft up to 2500 grafts. Anything beyond 2500 grafts would be charged at $2.50 starting with the 2501st graft. So graft #1-2500 are one price, #2501+ are lower. Like a taxi ride, the meter starts all over again on the next trip.
I always worry when a single case is put forth as a typical example of a problem. I do not doubt this young man could’ve seen some side effects, but I would think that this is a very rare example if it is true. I do doubt the long term impotence reported, however. Propecia has a half life of 4-5 hours, which means it is out of the blood stream in a day. Tissue fixation of the drug may last for up to a week, but by then, all of the effects of the drug should be gone. Unfortunately, the report gives us little insights into objective evidence for the ED that doctors would explore, such as nocturnal penile tumescence studies, to substantiate if the problem is real or psychological.
I was flipping through the current Nov/Dec issue of the Hair Transplant Forum International (a print newsletter for the hair transplant industry) and wanted to share something I read.