Researchers enrolled 182 women being treated with chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer and assigned them at random to two groups. One group wore a scalp-cooling cap during their infusions. The other group did not. After four rounds of chemotherapy, clinicians who did not know which group each woman was in graded her hair loss on a standard scale. The bar for success was set at keeping all of the hair, or losing less than half of it without needing a wig.

Among the women whose results could be assessed at that point, 50.5 percent of the cooling group met the bar, which was 48 women out of 95. In the group without cooling, none did, zero out of 47. The difference was clear enough at an interim check that the trial was stopped early. Side effects in the cooling group were all mild to moderate, with headache the most common at about 12 percent during the first cycle, and no serious problems with the device. The authors name two limits on their own work. Stopping early meant fewer women completed the study than originally planned, and data on longer-term results and safety was still needed at the time of publication.

Here's the study: Nangia J, Wang T, Osborne C, et al. Effect of a Scalp Cooling Device on Alopecia in Women Undergoing Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer: The SCALP Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA, 2017;317(6):596-605. Read it here

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