The effect of scalp cooling on CIA-related quality of life in breast cancer patients: a systematic review

Chemotherapy-induced alopecia (CIA) remains a distressing adverse event of cancer treatment but may be prevented by scalp cooling. The effectiveness of scalp cooling, however, is dependent on the chemotherapy regimen with successful hair preservation (i.e., < 50% hair loss) in 41–59% of women on taxane-based therapies in comparison to 16–36% on anthracycline-based therapies. Despite the potential utility, use of scalp cooling has shown a more equivocal impact on quality of life (QoL). In this review, we aim to evaluate the use of scalp cooling for CIA and quantitative QoL measures.

A systematic review of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases for clinical studies on scalp cooling to prevent CIA published before October 29, 2018 was performed. Clinical studies with 5 or more patients that reported on a quantitative QoL measure were included and graded according to a modified five-point scale from the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.

Studies meeting inclusion criteria included 4 randomized clinical trials (RCT), 8 cohort studies, and 1 cross-sectional study with 1282 unique patients. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (QLQ-C30: 46%) and Breast Cancer Module (QLQ-BR23: 46%) represented the most commonly used QoL assessments. Overall, 4 (31%) of the 13 studies concluded that scalp cooling was associated with significant improvements in QoL measures; 8 (62%) determined that there was either non-significant or no improvements; and 1 (7.7%) provided a mixed conclusion. Although 2 (50%) RCT demonstrated that scalp cooling can effectively prevent CIA depending on the chemotherapy regimen, these studies did not show that successful hair preservation was associated with improved QoL measures.

This review demonstrates that scalp cooling is not consistently associated with significant QoL improvements as assessed by EORTC QLQ-C30 and -BR23. Representing a critical limitation, more than one-third of the studies did not subcategorize QoL outcomes for successfully or unsuccessfully scalp-cooled patients but rather reported on QoL measures for all scalp-cooled patients in general. Failure to prevent hair loss in patients undergoing an expensive and potentially uncomfortable treatment likely contributes to decreased well-being, impacting the overall distribution of QoL measures in scalp cooling patients compared to controls. Future studies should incorporate validated QoL instruments specific to hair disease and classify QoL outcomes for scalp-cooled patients based on the degree of hair preservation.