When a regular mammogram showed early stage breast cancer, Donna Tookes had some important decisions to make. Choosing the Women’s Cancer Program at Mount Sinai Chelsea turned out to be one of the best of them.
Donna’s husband, Darryl, had read about a clinical trial that was being led by Paula Klein, MD, a medical oncologist at Mount Sinai Chelsea who focuses on care for breast cancer patients in the tristate area. It would end up saving the day for Donna.
The clinical trial studied the effectiveness of the DigniCap® scalp cooling system to reduce the likelihood of chemotherapy-induced hair loss in women with breast cancer. Donna and Darryl were so impressed that they decided to commute from Stamford, Connecticut, to enroll and participate.
“Cancer didn’t care if I lost my hair. Mount Sinai did,” she says. While participating in the DigniCap trial, she also received her chemotherapy treatment at Mount Sinai Chelsea.
“I want others to know about the life-saving and life-changing work that is being done there,” Donna says. “At a very scary time in my life, Mount Sinai gave me hope.” Four years after treatment, she had no signs of cancer.
As a result of the research by Dr. Klein, an Associate Professor of Oncology and Hematology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the DigniCap system was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2016 to reduce the likelihood of chemotherapy-induced hair loss in women with breast cancer.
Mount Sinai was the first health system in New York to offer breast cancer patients the DigniCap, which is now available at the Dubin Breast Center of The Tisch Cancer Institute, Mount Sinai Chelsea, and Mount Sinai West. In the FDA clinical trials completed in the United States, 7 out of 10 patients with early-stage breast cancer kept at least 50 percent of their hair.
It might not seem like much. But keeping her hair made a world of difference. “Having access to the technology at Mount Sinai allowed me to keep my hair, which helped me feel more like myself during months of challenging treatment,” Donna says.