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Chemotherapy may be described as treatment of cancer with different drugs and chemicals. It has been seen that majority of patients undergoing chemotherapy suffer from hair loss. The reason is hair follicle cells grow quite fast and the drugs used for chemotherapy attack any cell growing and attacks healthy hair follicle cells also. Therefore, it leads to hair loss. But, not all drugs used for chemotherapy is responsible for this hair loss. Some of them produce some thinning of hair while other drugs may cause lot of hair loss from the scalp, body as well as from eyebrows. Also, different people show different levels of tolerance of these drugs. Therefore, you will find people losing hair when they are not expected to do so while others who are expected to lose hair do not do so.

This loss of hair may start any time, may be after a few days after start of therapy or may be after a few weeks. But, this hair loss is not permanent. Hair starts growing after the chemotherapy is over. But, this hair may not be like normal hair but will be fine hair like a baby’s hair. Generally, hair is regained fully within 3 to 6 months after the therapy is over.
A method has been developed for prevention of hair loss during chemotherapy. This is called cold cap system. The idea behind this treatment that a cold cap cools the scalp and thus restricts blood circulation there and causing restricted blood flow to hair follicles. Thus, it reduces the adverse effect of drugs on hair.

But, not all patients can tolerate wearing such cold cap on their head as they may feel very cold wearing the cap. This discomfort level varies from patient to patient. The failure of wearing such caps does not affect the efficacy of chemotherapy. Also, this cold cap system is not effective for all drugs used in chemotherapy. It has shown results for some drugs only.
This system has been found 85% effective when using following drugs for chemotherapy:

• Docetaxel (taxotere)
• Paclitaxel (Taxol)
• Epirubicin
• Cyclophospamide

This process is done by cooling scalp to a temperature of 17 °C to obtain a subcutaneous temperature of 20 °C (68 °F). This process restricts the blood supply to hair follicles causing diminished perfusion or no perfusion to these cells. This prevents delivery of drug at a high dose at the beginning phase of chemotherapy. Also, this coldness reduces the availability of cytotoxic drugs (drugs which kill cancer cells) to hair follicle cells because of reduced metabolic rate because of coldness. Both these effects stops or reduces the loss of hair caused by chemotherapy.