The Side Effects Of Chemotherapy Drugs

Although hair loss is one of the side effects of chemotherapy that most of us know about, we may not know that alopecia is only temporary. Usually it is not a long term effect and it stops once the treatment is over. After a while, hair will start growing back but its texture and color may be a bit different from what you were used to having before.

True, there are many side effects of chemotherapy and researchers have been doing their best to find ways of preventing them from happening or at least reducing them. In the case of hair loss, prevention is achieved by putting on a cold cap meant to cool the scalp and reduce blood circulation in the area. As a result, the blood will not carry the drug to the hair follicles and this means that one’s hair will be protected from the damage of the drug.

All in all, the side effects of chemotherapy drugs are an obstacle and doctors are still trying to reduce their number. Even if one solution to preventing side effects from appearing is available, the same solution may not work for another drug that leads to the same problem. The same goes for hair loss; the cold cap may have the wanted effect of doing away with alopecia only in the case of certain drugs, but it may not work with some other ones.