Cancer topic and finger print - 1262387

Hi wadocator, I've not heard of this before. Am anticipating others responses. Also will ask faculty to respond.

I hope your wife enjoys what the health club has to offer,
Janine

Hi wadvocator,

The only thing I've found is some reports of a problem with disappearing fingerprints from patients who developed hand-foot syndrome after taking capecitabine. In some cases it caused problems in trying to re-enter the U.S. after traveling abroad. In the context of Tarceva, Dr. Goodgame stated:

"The peeling of the skin on the feet and hands ("hand foot syndrome") is unusual for Tarceva, but a common side effect of similar drugs that are used to treat kidney cancer (sutent, nexavar, etc.).

It can get really bad if the skin is peeling down to the deep layers and the drugs need to be stopped. On the other hand, it can also be mild and treated with moisturizers. "Urea" based creams are often used for the moderate to severe hand-foot symptoms, although I'm not sure if they are available over the counter." - http://cancergrace.org/forums/index.php?topic=5952.msg40104#msg40104

JimC
Forum moderator

This is a new one for me. I've never heard of this, although people on Tarceva are prone to cracks in the skin at the fingertips that I imagine could give trouble to a probably very imperfect (i.e., dumb) fingerprint scanner. I suspect that the comment that the person who told you that others going through cancer treatments have this problem has provided a very dubious statement. I would be very surprised if anything more than a very small minority of patients on a very small minority of cancer treatments are truly more prone to being misread by the fingerprint scanner. Honestly, it sounds like a statement that is not credible to me, and I'd question the evidence upon which it's based before I would accept this concept at face value.

-Dr. West