Scalp cooling treatment helps treat chemotherapy-induced hair loss, researchers say

chemotherapy-induced alopeciaor CIA, is one of the most common and devastating side effects of cancer treatment, affecting approximately 65% ​​of patients.

Scalp cooling is a treatment that improves hair loss.

“There is less chemotherapy reaching the hair follicles.”

Nancy Vega, 54, is battling breast cancer.

“I'm a mother of four children and I want to continue to be a mother of four children. That's my strength,” Vega said.

Vega has been doing well since being diagnosed. She learned the news while caring for patients at a dialysis center.

“I never imagined I would have to sit in a similar chair,” Vega said.

Vega wanted to keep her cancer a secret, especially at work, and was worried that chemotherapy would cause her to lose her hair. She started researching and came across cooling the scalp to reduce hair loss.

Dr. Beth McClellan of Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center says the cap keeps the scalp cool while chemotherapy is injected.

“This kind of restricts and tightens the blood vessels in the scalp, so less of the chemotherapy actually gets to the hair follicles that cause the damage,” McClellan said. “While most of the research on scalp cooling has been done on white women with straight or thinning hair, one study actually showed that scalp cooling may not be effective in black women.”

Clinical trial helping women of color in the Bronx

McClellan said cold caps are most effective when held close to the scalp.

“Chemotherapy is still hitting all the places it needs to be to treat cancer, just less of it is reaching the hair,” she said.

But if your hair is thick or tightly curled, that can be difficult to achieve, which is why an ongoing clinical trial at Montefiore Einstein Cancer Center has been launched to help women of color.

“Our trial is the first to focus on using different techniques to prepare hair so that people with curlier, more textured hair types have a better chance of success,” McClellan said.

Including Vega, about 25 patients receiving taxane-based chemotherapy are participating in the Bronx-based study. Researchers will follow patients for six months after treatment to see the long-term effects of scalp cooling.

McClellan said the results so far have been promising.

He said: “While we have seen over time that there are better management options for other side effects such as nausea and vomiting, hair loss is so impactful and devastating for so many women that we remain without many options.” “In fact, some women refuse chemotherapy or choose less effective treatments simply because they don't want to lose their hair.”

Vega completed scalp cooling treatment in February.

“I didn't lose all my hair,” she said. “That was the best thing.”

“Health is everything”

Vega underwent chemotherapy and tumor removal, and completed radiation therapy in May 2025. She still comes in monthly for chemotherapy maintenance infusions.

She has hair, but most of all, she has health.

“It's not all about the hair. It's all about the health,” she said.

More cancer patients will soon have access to treatment. A law requiring private health insurance companies in New York state to cover scalp cooling will go into effect in January.

The study, which is still ongoing, will also include a control group in which participants will not receive hair preparation or scalp cooling. The goal is to have clinical trial results by the end of next year.

Researchers are also investigating the cellular and genetic determinants of chemotherapy-induced alopecia. Rather than using traditionally more invasive skin biopsies, we perform genome sequencing on extracted hair samples to identify potential hair biomarkers.