Breast Cancer Resources Center

You might not think about how important your hair is until you face losing it. And if you have cancer and are about to undergo chemotherapy, the chance of hair loss is very real. Both men and women report hair loss as one of the side effects they fear most after being diagnosed with cancer.

Hair loss happens because the chemotherapy affects all cells in the body, not just the cancer cells. The lining of the mouth, stomach, and the hair follicles are especially sensitive because those cells multiply rapidly just like the cancer cells. The difference is that the normal cells will repair themselves, making these side effects temporary.

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.

Can hair loss be prevented during chemotherapy treatment? There is no known way to prevent chemotherapy-induced hair loss. However, not all chemotherapy medications cause hair loss.

You should consult with your doctor about the type of treatment recommended for you and what its side effects are likely to be. Whether or not you lose your hair depends in part on the specific medication and dosage administered. Women should consider visiting a wig salon before they begin losing their hair so that the specialist may become familiar with her present hairstyle and color.

Some wig salons specialize in hair loss from chemotherapy and are able to offer women specific advice. A wig specialist may also wish to measure the woman's head size to make sure an average wig will fit. Custom-made wigs sometimes take several weeks to have made.

Chemotherapy drugs are powerful medications that attack rapidly growing cancer cells. Unfortunately, these drugs also attack other rapidly growing cells in your body - including those in your hair roots. 6

Chemotherapy hair loss, and changes in skin and body can be devastating after effects of cancer treatment. Fortunately, most of the time hair loss from chemotherapy is temporary. You can expect to regrow a full head of hair six months to a year after your treatment ends, though your hair may temporarily be a different shade or texture. Remember the hair loss from chemotherapy is temporary.

It usually starts to grow back about six weeks after the person finishes their chemotherapy, and it may look and feel different from the person's original hair. It may be curlier or a slightly different color.

Sometimes hair grows in grey until the person's hair color (also called pigment) cells begin to work again. Most people will have a full head of hair again about six months to a year after they stop taking chemotherapy.

The decrease in blood cell counts does not occur right at the start of chemotherapy because the drugs do not destroy the cells already in the bloodstream (these are not dividing rapidly). Instead, the drugs affect new blood cells that are being made by the bone marrow.

Radiation only causes hair loss on the particular part of the body treated. If radiation is used to treat the breast, there is no hair loss on your head. But there might be loss of hair around the nipple, for women who have hair in that location. Radiation to the brain, used to treat metastatic cancer in the brain, usually causes complete hair loss on the head.

Cold caps don't work for everyone. They only block certain drugs and are not suitable for use in all types of cancer. You can't really have scalp cooling if there is too high a risk that cancer cells could be presenting the scalp blood vessels.

This is because there would be a possibility that the cells in the scalp blood vessels would not be killed by the chemotherapy. It certainly is not advisable for leukemia or lymphoma treatment, for example.

You cannot wear a cold cap if you are having continuous chemotherapy through a pump either, because you would have to wear the cold cap all the time, 24 hours a day. Chemotherapy is very effective in killing cancer cells, but it also affects normal cells as well. The strength of the drugs used in chemotherapy causes side effects that can bring discomfort and inconvenience.

Typical side effects of chemotherapy include gastrointestinal tract problems, hair loss, low blood cell counts, skin rashes, fatigue, and infertility. It is important to remember that most side effects are manageable, and if they become problematic, there is medication to treat them.