LONDON – When a cancer patient from Singapore traveled to the United States last year, he discovered an unusual side effect of his medication: missing fingerprints.
LONDON – When a cancer patient from Singapore traveled to the United States last year, he discovered an unusual side effect of his medication: missing fingerprints.
The 62-year-old man was taking capecitabine, or Xeloda, to treat head and neck cancer. Upon arriving in the U.S., immigration officials asked him for his fingerprints. But the drug had caused so much redness and peeling to his fingers that the patient, identified only as Mr. S., had none.
Customs officials held Mr. S. for four hours before deciding he was not a security threat, according to the case published Wednesday in a letter to the Annals of Oncology journal.
Capecitabine is a common cancer drug, routinely given to patients with head, neck and kidney cancers as well as lymphomas and leukemias. Doctors said very few patients temporarily lose their fingerprints while on Xeloda, but it does happen.
"Most patients will complain they’re having difficulty holding things or sensing things," said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, who was not linked to the case. "I’ve never had a patient running into a problem with police authorities, but this is not an exaggeration. It could actually happen."
After returning home, Mr. S. asked his oncologist, Dr. Eng-Huat Tan at the National Cancer Centre in Singapore, to write a letter certifying he was on capecitabine.
Surprised by Mr. S.’s predicament, Tan recommended in his letter to the journal that patients taking capecitabine carry a similar doctor’s note if they are traveling to the United States. Unlike most other countries, American immigration officials take two fingerprints from foreign visitors.
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