For many women suffering from cancer, a devastating part of their battle comes from the treatment itself.
When a patient undergoes chemotherapy, they often lose their hair, and it’s a difficult and uncontrollable thing to for a lot of women to deal with. Fortunately, a new device has recently been cleared by the FDA, and it aims to help prevent hair loss in cancer patients.
It’s called the DigniCap, and it’s a silicon cap that works by cooling a patient’s scalp. Meant to be worn 30 minutes before chemotherapy and another 90 minutes after, it reduces chemotherapy-induced hair loss and keeps cancer-fighting drugs from damaging the hair. The DigniCap has sensors that monitor and maintain the temperature the patient requires, without completely freezing their scalp in the process.
According to the FDA, the product was tested on 122 women with Stage 1 and Stage 2 breast cancer currently undergoing chemotherapy, and “more than 66% of patients treated with the DigniCap reported losing less than half their hair.”
The device will cost between $1,500 and $3,000 (equating to about $300-$600 a treatment, and breast cancer patients typically average four to six treatments.)
Breast cancer survivors that have used the cap say, “it’s nice to have one less battle to overcome.”
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[Featured Image Credit: Twitter- Martin Waleij]