How do you avoid epilation in patients hoping to preserve their facial hair during radiotherapy?
Interesting question. I have not created an avoidance. It’s my experience that doses of about 50 Gy+ commonly cause permanent hair loss. It’s hard to avoid hair loss in areas where elective nodal or mucosal/skin coverage is needed. It’s certainly disappointing for some patients. In many scenarios of...
Interesting topic.
I have had a handful number of head and neck patients that requested if there was any way to avoid permanent facial hair loss.
As culturally it is quite important for some people.
I have defined the avoidance area and kept the skin max dose below 30. I followed the natural hair gr...
I agree with about 50 Gy as the threshold for permanent hair loss. When it is a concern, I have indeed wired the margin of hair in question, taken photos (both for baseline and as all the wires can be hard to interpret on CT), and constrain to <50 Gy (ideally a bit lower) as a lower priority objecti...
For patients receiving H&N radiotherapy, facial hair preservation may not be a trivial matter. Some may ask for it because of cosmetic preference, and others may demand it due to religious belief. In China, maintaining all body constituents including hair and skin as bestowed by one’s parents was on...