Numbness and pain on fingers/toes with chemo

Some chemo agents are responsible for neuropathic pain.   This pain on your nerves is defined as numbness, tingling and/or pain on feet and/or fingers associated commonly with chemo Taxol (Paclitaxel) and cisplatin.   The pain is increasing as you receive more of these chemo agents.  Severe nerve pain occurs in 20 to 35 percent of patients receiving 250 mg/m² of Taxol every three weeks compared to 5 to 12 percent in large series using doses ≤200 mg/m² every three weeks (1). 

Prevention is usually better than treatment.   Thus, when you start to have these sensations, please let you oncologist knows who then can reduce the dose or change the chemo.

There are medications you may receive for neuropathic pain such as Gabapentin (Neurontin).  Recently, an early study of a randomized placebo-controlled trials have shown a benefit for Duloxetine (Cymbalta),  an antidepressant of the serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) category, in patients with diabetic neuropathy, and the drug is approved for this use in the United States. In a preliminary report reported at the 2012 meeting of ASCO, duloxetine reduced pain and improved quality of life in patients with painful chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy following chemotherapy (2)

Reference:
1.Lee JJ, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2006;24(10):1633
2.Lavoie Smith EM, et al.  CALGB 170601: A phase III double blind trial of duloxetine to treat painful chemotehrapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. J Clin Oncol 30, 2012