FDA Clearance for Paxman Cancer Hair Loss Prevention Cold Caps

Posted by Mike Peake

In this article: Hair Loss


The British maker of a device to prevent hair loss during cancer treatment has been given a huge boost in the States, where the government has cleared its product for use.

Paxman’s proven and popular scalp cooling system is already a feature in hundreds of clinics across the UK and the world, and will now be rolled out across the US following FDA clearance.

Healthcare providers will be able to choose between their cold cap system and another FDA-cleared device named DigniCap, which works on the same basic principle.

Paxman Scalp Cooling System Chemotherapy Hair Loss Prevention Cold CapsPerfected over 25 years


Developed by current CEO, Richard Paxman's refridgeration specialist grandfather and uncle after his aunt developed cancer, and based on beer cooler technology, this news is hugely encouraging for this family business.

Paxman’s system has been perfected over the past 25 years, and the company claims that it is clinically-proven, cost-effective and widely-embraced by doctors. A sad fact about chemotherapy drugs is that they usually lead to hair loss something that many people with the cancer say is one of the worst parts of the whole experience. But in a great many cases this shedding can be prevented or minimised with the Paxman cold cap.

The machine can be used with all solid tumour cancers that are treated with chemotherapy drugs such as taxanes, alkylating agents and anthracyclines/DNA intercalating agents. These drugs, states Paxman on its website, “target rapidly dividing cells and the matrix keratinocytes, which results in hair loss.”

While this is rarely permanent, in many cases it can be avoided by wearing a cold cap, which stops hair follicles in the growth phase from being attacked by chemotherapy drugs by cooling the scalp. The temperature only needs to be lowered by a few degrees before, during and after administration of the drugs to be effective.

Clinical trial


As part of the FDA clearance process, Paxman’s device was used in the first-ever randomised clinical trial to evaluate modern scalp cooling, which took place at a number of sites across America. Paxman’s website quotes lead researcher Dr Julie Nangia, assistant professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who said: “The Paxman hair loss prevention system is a safe and effective method for reducing hair loss in women being treated with chemotherapy for breast cancer, especially for those on taxane-based regimens.”

Paxman now hopes to install 250 cold cap systems across the US in the next year.

Says Richard Paxman, the company’s CEO: “The USA is the largest healthcare market in the world with over 1.6 million diagnoses of cancer each year. We have spent six years conducting a comprehensive multi-centre randomised clinical trial to ensure our data is as robust as possible. This has been a significant investment for us, but we are incredibly excited to be able to offer scalp cooling to US patients giving them a choice to maintain some control during treatment as we see in the UK and other parts of the world.”

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The Belgravia Centre

The Belgravia Centre is a world-renowned group of a hair loss clinic in Central London, UK. If you are worried about hair loss you can arrange a free consultation with a hair loss expert or complete our Online Consultation from anywhere in the world for home-use treatment.

View our Hair Loss Success Stories, which includes the world's largest gallery of hair growth photos and demonstrates the level of success that so many of Belgravia's patients achieve.

Posted by Mike Peake

In this article: Hair Loss


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