Cooling Scalp with Chemotherapy Include Alopecia among Cancer Patients : Integrative Review

Abstract

Background: The effect of alopecia on men and women has been documented in the literature, and cooling of scalp to prevent alopecia has been documented also, therefore the aim of this study was to determine how greater is the effect of chemotherapy-related alopecia by gender and the effect of cooling the scalp to prevent alopecia. Method: In this integrative review 9 articles have been used, three qualitative and six quantitative based on two major database PubMed and Science Direct from 2008 to 2013 and the population target is both males and females ages more than 18 years and who have alopecia induced chemotherapy or have risk of developing alopecia. Result: In most studies women appear to be more effected by alopecia induced by chemotherapy than males therefore the cooling scalp has been used to prevent alopecia, especially among women and the result of this method is a positive effect. Conclusion: In this integrative review I recommend to focus on this method and trigger the researchers to do more specific studies on cooling the scalp among men and on the type of cancer to bring more effective results of use of this method because it very cheap and easy to apply and the result of most of the previous research showed it had a positive effect.