Subject terms
cancer, alopecia, CIA, breast cancer
BREAST CANCER, ADVERSE EVENTS, CANCER, REGRESSION, ALOPECIA
Chemotherapy-induced alopecia (CIA) is a challenge in the management of cancer patients. Scalp cooling (SC) leads to reduction in CIA, however it is associated with significant adverse events, leading to 3–13% discontinuation rates. This pilot study evaluated the role of Electric Hand Warmers (EHW) on thermal (TC), sensorial (SCo) and general comfort (GC) in patients with breast cancer (BC) undergoing chemotherapy and SC to reduce CIA. Patients were randomly assigned to EHW use or observation. TC, SCo and GC were evaluated after each chemotherapy infusion. Favorable outcomes in both TC and SCo defined a positive result on GC. We analysed the impact of age, alopecia, chemotherapy regimen and EHW use in the different comfort scales using a Logistic Regression (LR) model. Forty women with early breast cancer were randomly assigned to EHW (n = 20) or observation (n = 20) during neo(adjuvant) chemotherapy. Median age was 53 years. In the EHW arm, favorable thermal response was reported by 79% versus 50% in the control arm (odds ratio [OR] 3.79, 