Hundreds more cancer patients are being given access to a technique which helps tackle hair loss after two new scalp cooling machines were donated to two hospitals in the South East. <\/p>\n
The machines at East Surrey Hospital and Crawley Hospital, in West Sussex, have doubled capacity in their chemotherapy units.<\/p>\n
Scalp cooling works by lowering the temperature of the scalp during chemotherapy, helping patients retain more of their hair during treatment.<\/p>\n
Chemotherapy patient Lara Smith from Reigate said “It has helped me maintain my sense of identity and meant I have been able to continue working for longer.”<\/p>\n
According to Macmillan Cancer Support, while scalp cooling is a way of reducing or preventing hair loss from chemotherapy, after treatment is over, it can also help hair grow back faster. It is often called a cold cap or cool cap.<\/p>\n
Smith, a current chemotherapy patient at East Surrey Hospital, said: “I have been using the cold cap alongside my treatment since April and still have all my hair.” <\/p>\n
Another patient, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “I was scared to try it as I thought it would be painful, but I would recommend it. Hair is a massive part of your identity.”<\/p>\n
The new machines were funded by a donation of \u00a322,000 to Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Charity’s cancer fund, given by an anonymous volunteer who had seen the difference scalp cooling can make to patients.<\/p>\n
Crawley hospital has 300 cold cap uses each year while East Surrey Hospital has around 620 cold cap uses each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds more cancer patients are being given access to a technique which helps tackle hair loss after two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-740101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}