Capecitabine and the Risk of Fingerprint Loss

Anticancer treatments are frequently accompanied by cutaneous adverse effects: capecitabine treatment induces hand-foot syndrome (HFS) in approximately 50% to 60% of patients, whereas hand-foot skin reaction (HFSR) has been reported in 19% to 34% of patients treated with the tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) sunitinib malate or sorafenib tosylate.
Ultimately, these cutaneous adverse events are believed to result in the loss of fingerprints, which, to our knowledge, has been described anecdotally for patients treated with capecitabine and can cause serious identification problems. We assessed the association of HFS and HFSR with fingerprint quality.