Chemotherapy, Scalp cooling cap, Hair loss, Cancer
Device classification
III
Project description
Chemotherapy drugs are powerful medications that attack rapidly growing cancer cells. Unfortunately, these drugs also attack normal cells in your body; including those of your hair roots.
Chemotherapy may cause hair loss all over the body; not just in the scalp. Sometimes in eyelash, eyebrow, armpit, pubic and other body hair also falls out. Some chemotherapy drugs are more likely than others to cause hair loss, and different doses can cause anything from a mere thinning to complete baldness
It was reported that as many as 8% of cancer patients may decline chemotherapy due to risk of alopecia, which is a type of hair loss. ( So this is the main problem ).
scalp cooling systems were used to reduce chemotherapy-induced hair loss. A scalp cooling cap is a therapeutic device used to cool the human scalp. It is the most prominent medical technology to prevent or reduce alopecia (hair loss) during chemotherapy.
However, current designs of scalp cooling systems are expensive, bulky, and has minimal technology additions.
Our project is one step in this direction focusing primarily on reducing the suffering of cancer patients due to chemotherapy-induced hair loss.
We aim to design a prototype scalp cooling system that is cost-effective, user-friendly, and has more technology components.
Our goal is to develop a prototype for a scalp cooling system that can reduce the temperature of the scalp skin to18.3 ⁰C, which will reduce tissue blood flow from 100% to 25%.
