Compression therapy with surgical gloves is effective at preventing paclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy, while also highly acceptable to cancer patients compared with cold therapy with frozen gloves, a study suggests.
Writing in the European Journal of Cancer [link here], the French researchers said using surgical gloves as a prevention strategy would be an easy-to-implement, non-invasive and low-cost method that could also improve patient quality of life.
The prospective self-controlled case series included 94 patients with breast cancer (median age 56) receiving a median 12 cycles of weekly paclitaxel treatment, with a median dose of 132 mg per cycle, at a French cancer centre.
During each chemotherapy cycle, patients wore double-layered surgical gloves on their dominant hand as the experimental arm and a frozen glove on their other hand as the control arm to compare the tolerability and efficacy of each glove type.
About 22% of patients had at least one dose modification related to neuropathies.
Six patients did not tolerate the frozen glove and 11 patients prematurely removed their frozen glove at least once, versus three patients removing their surgical glove.
Surgical gloves had a significantly improved median overall satisfaction score at the end of paclitaxel treatment (SG: 9/10; FG: 6/10), with patients reporting increased comfort (SG: 8/10; FG: 5/10) and less pain (SG: 1/10; FG: 4/10).
Importantly, less patients reported at least one grade ≥2 peripheral neuropathy for surgical gloves, although overall rates of peripheral neuropathy were similar.
While symptomatic onycholysis was rare, the researchers observed it occurred twice as often with frozen gloves (6 cases) versus surgical gloves (3 cases).
“One of the major strengths of compression therapy with surgical gloves is its immediate applicability in clinical practice. Unlike cold therapy, which requires specific equipment, freezing logistics, and close temperature monitoring, surgical gloves are inexpensive, widely available, and easy to use without any special preparation,” the researchers said.
“This practicality makes compression therapy particularly attractive for outpatient chemotherapy settings, including home-based paclitaxel administration programs that are increasingly being developed to improve patient convenience and reduce healthcare burden.
“Moreover, compression therapy could offer a safe alternative for patients in whom cold therapy is contraindicated, such as individuals with Raynaud’s disease or cold sensitivity disorders.
“By simplifying implementation and extending eligibility to broader patient populations, surgical gloves compression has the potential to become a new standard of care for preventing chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy.”
However, they added that further research was needed to confirm the efficacy of compression therapy, as well as its potential superiority over cold therapy.