Mouth Sores on Doxil

Hello Doctor,

First let me thank you for your helping us all on this forum. I am on my first recurrence and I found this site while awaiting my surgery for initial diagnosis. It made a difficult time much easier.

Anyway, my question is whether there is anything else I can do for the mouth sores caused by Doxil. My gyn/onc prescribed a stomatitis cocktail that is a mixture of benadryl, maalox, and xylocaine. It does help, but the numbness wears off after about 10 mins. I am only supposed to use it 4 times a day. I have had 2 treatments of Doxil so far, with my next round scheduled for Feb 5th. I use Biotene toothepaste and mouthwash. I don't have any open sores in my mouth, just soreness.

Thank you for any suggestions you may have.

[Annekathryn Goodman, M.D.]

Hi Rebel Spirit,
So I went to Google and typed in "chemotherapy, mouth sores" and got an AMAZING number of hits. I decided that it would just be better to send you there than to try to summarize here.
Basically I agree with what you are doing.
Other suggestions include:
stay away from hard ,hot, or spicy foods,
see a dentist to double check for other dental problems
use baking soda and water rinses

Finally check with your doctor about the dose of Doxil. sometimes, we have to reduce the dose or go the every 5 weeks for people who have skin toxicity
take care