Prevention and Treatment of Chemotherapy-Induced Alopecia: A Narrative Review on Emerging Techniques

Abstract

Goal:To analyze emerging techniques in the prevention and treatment of chemotherapy-induced alopecia, and to evaluate how effective and safe scalp cooling and photobiomodulation techniques may be. Methods: Using the Pubmed database platform, a narrative bibliographic review was carried out, with the aim of locating relevant sources for the pre-determined research objective. The search was carried out using the search terms "Chemotherapy", "Alopecia", "Chemotherapy Induced Alopecia", "Low-Level Light Therapy", Scalp Cooling", "Prevention" and "Treatment", in association with the Boolean operators "AND" and "OR", to search for articles, resulting in 434 initial articles. Within these numbers, due to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, only 28 were selected. Discussion: Studies show that patients who used the hair cryotherapy technique had less hair loss. The photobiomodulation technique has been well tolerated by patients and no significant adverse effects have been reported. Final Considerations: Emerging treatments for alopecia, such as scalp cooling and photobiomodulation, are showing excellent results, however, they require more research in order to evaluate ideal treatment protocols, long-term patient safety and effectiveness in different types of alopecia according to different chemotherapy medications.