BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Hair loss and baldness is a common side effect of chemotherapy, but there's technology that can help retain hair through the tough regimen of cancer treatments.
It’s called cold-capping and it’s similar to a helmet that cools the scalp while patients are undergoing chemotherapy.
The technology cools the scalp during chemotherapy treatment to reduce the amount of chemotherapy drugs that reach the hair follicles.
“Cold cap is a cap which is maintained at a very cold temperature. And the reason that we do this is that whenever anything is cold, the blood supply to that area decreases, right? So if the blood supply decreases, then the chemo to that area is decreased."Dr. Ranju Gupta, an oncologist with Lehigh Valley Health Network.
“Cold cap is a cap which is maintained at a very cold temperature," said Dr. Ranju Gupta, an oncologist with Lehigh Valley Health Network.
"And the reason that we do this is that whenever anything is cold, the blood supply to that area decreases, right? So if the blood supply decreases, then the chemo to that area is decreased."
Gupta said cold caps can't prevent complete hair loss, but "they can decrease the amount of hair loss and that's the concept.”
‘I still looked like mom’
Jessica Erfer, who was diagnosed in 2022 at age 41, said her first reaction was, “I didn't want to say, like, I'm too young and no one in my family has had breast cancer, but no one in my family has had breast cancer and I'm too young.
“My second thought was, 'What am I going to do in terms of telling my kid?' Because no one wants to tell their kid that, right?”
"I've learned from cancer that you can't have expectations for anything."Jessica Erfer, breast cancer survivor
Erfer, of Wynnewood, Montgomery County, said she then heard about the cold-capping technology that would help her to retain her hair during chemo.
“When it came time to face that, I was, like, 'I can't do that,'" she said. "I can't have my son see me sick and this allowed me to slow a lot of that.
"So I think when he saw me, not at my best, I still looked like mom.”
“I've learned from cancer that you can't have expectations for anything, that you hope for the best and plan for the worst and that's kind of what I went into cold capping with.”
Did exactly what she intended
Erfer said the hardest part about cold-capping was "it is not an easy process.”
“I cried every time," she said. "And it got to the point where if I saw the box that my cap was in, a little case, I would have a panic attack because of the pain.”
Gupta said most of her patients who have gotten cold cap "did not have any complaints about the brain freeze."
"Some patients love it. Other patients aren't OK with that, but most of the patients have not regretted spending the money to get the scalp cooling or the cold cap.”Dr. Ranju Gupta, an oncologist with Lehigh Valley Health Network
"I know we give them warm blankets and warm drinks to take, so they do get through it," she said.
"Some patients love it. Other patients aren't OK with that, but most of the patients have not regretted spending the money to get the scalp cooling or the cold cap.”
Erfer said the cold cap was painful, but did exactly what she intended it to do. She retained her hair through her treatments.
“I was never bald during the entire process," she said. "I wore a baseball hat at the end of chemo for about six weeks because it just looked like I had really thin hair.”
Further proof that it worked, she said, was the fact that all the other hair on her body was gone because of the drugs, but the hair on her head remained.
Technology that saved her hair
Despite the pain she endured through the treatments, Erfer said the cap was worth all of the trouble, especially since it protected her son’s psychological well-being.
“I didn't have to see the trauma in my son's face, of like, ‘Mom has no hair now.'"Jessica Erfer, breast cancer survivor
“I didn't have to see the trauma in my son's face, of like, ‘Mom has no hair now,'” she said.
There are two types of cold caps used for such treatment.
Erfer used the Paxman system at Penn Medicine Radnor. The treatment also is available at Lehigh Valley Health Network.
“It is expensive,” Gupta said. She said it's categorized as cosmetic treatment, "so it's not covered by insurance companies.
"You actually have to rent the cap from the companies that make them and they charge you for each chemotherapy.”
But financial assistance is available, she said.
Erfer said she now has no evidence of disease. She said she's thankful for the technology that saved her hair, but hopes she never has to endure it again.
“If I never see that box with my cap in it ever again, it will be too soon,” she said.
