Scalp Hypothermia (Penguin Cold Caps) in Preventing Alopecia in Cancer Patients

Abstract

Cancer morbidity and mortality are severe public health problems that are increasing day by day. In addition to their benefits of some methods, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which are applied for cancer treatment, there are some side effects and complications, such as skin reactions, hair loss, fatigue, vomiting and loss of appetite. In this article, one of these complications and affecting more than half of the patients who receive cancer treatment alopecia will be mentioned. Alopecia may be temporary or permanent, but it has been stated by health professionals that this problem is often ignored. Alopecia affects body image in individuals, increases the level of stress, causes anxiety and depression and even individuals are exposed to stigma. The emergence of these problems in the patient also affects the quality of life negatively. To prevent alopecia, which can be seen especially due to chemotherapy, the process of cooling the scalp has started to be applied about 50 years ago and the materials used thanks to the changing materials science have been developed. In this study, the efficacy of scalp hypothermia (Penguin Cold Caps) in the prevention of alopecia, which is frequently seen due to chemotherapy, has been evaluated and it is aimed to investigate the relevant studies.

Papulosquamous skin diseases are common skin diseases and have morphological features. The diagnosis process is sometimes troublesome, as the symptoms of the subgroups of papulosquamous skin diseases are very close to each other. The diagnosis of the disease can be made at the clinical examination. In cases where the clinical examination is insufficient, the diagnosis is made by histopathological evaluation by skin biopsy. In this process, dermatologists and pathologists should work in harmony, and both doctors should have a good knowledge of the diagnosis process. Therefore, more uncomplicated, higher success rate, and clinically practical methods are needed in order for Papulosquamous skin diseases to be established only by a clinical examination by a dermatologist without the need for a skin biopsy. This study aims to develop a rule-based algorithm that can detect Papulosquamous skin diseases with a high success rate, can be used by dermatologists in the clinic, developed with artificial intelligence methods. Within the scope of the study, the previously collected data set was used. The data set contains clinical and histopathological findings for six different subgroups of Papulosquamous skin diseases. Firstly, the data set is grouped into two classes. Then, clinical and histopathological findings were selected with feature selection algorithms. Then, rule-based diagnostic algorithms were created with the help of decision trees. As a result of the study, Papulosquamous skin diseases rule-based algorithms have been developed with an average of 82.98% accuracy rate, 0.89 sensitivity, and 0.76 specificity rate using only selected clinical findings. Consequently, according to the results obtained in this study, algorithms developed within the scope of the study, high-accuracy rule-based algorithms developed with artificial intelligence methods can be used in the clinic for the diagnosis of Papulosquamous skin diseases.