I started Radiation in January this year. I was advised to use the Mepitel film during radiation treatment at my Planning appointment. The film was placed on my skin 2 days after treatment started. This gave me a sense of protection from the radiation. I had the film completely changed only once during treatment, with a few repair patches and trims throughout the treatment (4 weeks). I found this film to adhere well to my skin. It appeared to protect my skin from any bad burning, although my skin was still red, it was nowhere near as bad as I expected it would get with the film on.
I did have problems with it itching, but my treatment was in the hot summer months which seem to make it worse for the itchiness (I found a cool wet tea towel over the area helped to relieve the itching). The only thing that I would advise is that I was told the radiation staff to keep the film on until it naturally started to peel from your body, as it had formed a protective skin. It is not always the case that the film will peel off itself, my film was very hard to remove, even with hot water and sorbolene.
Another issue I had with the film was that there was a small gap around the areola and the nipple area. In my case, this caused sweat to build up under the film in this area. You need to be careful with this as I started to form an infection in that area a few weeks after treatment had stopped, which got quite bad. I was told at the time by my Breast Care Nurse that this was not a common occurrence. Several weeks later she informed me of other cases of the same thing happening, and that radiation staff should be made aware if this happens after treatment has finished, that it may require just the film around the nipple being removed to prevent this problem from happening. Although this is what happened to me, it may not be common in others, but it was quite scary (over a long weekend without any treatment available from radiation staff), so would like to let others know about this.
This Mepitel film was supplied by the Radiation staff at the local hospital where I was being treated, you might like to check this with the staff where you are being treated. Another bit of advice with the film, is that when showering you need to be careful of water getting on the film as if water comes over your shoulder, it can form water bubbles under the film which can make it start to peel, I just pushed out the water and gently pushed back any of the film, which seemed to adhere enough until I could see the radiation staff again. Washing hair is a harder experience, I found something that worked for me was to place a towel or tea towel from your upper back, over your shoulder, to over the whole of your breast, the towel may get wet, but it gave a good protection to the film. Hope this helps.
