Development and clinical application of an AFC regimen (adriamycin, futraful, cytosine arabinoside) for superficial bladder tumors.

Our AFC regimen was originally developed to treat superficial bladder tumors. It consists of a daily intravesical administration of 20 mg Adriamycin (ADM) and 200 mg Cytosine arabinoside (CA) dissolved in 20 ml of sterilized distilled water, simultaneously with a daily rectal suppository of 750 mg tegafur (Futraful) for a total of 20 applications. Our study demonstrated the following characteristics of the AFC modality: (1) It is simple; (2) it is completed in 3 weeks, which is shorter than conventional bladder instillation therapy; (3) the effective rate is reasonable (70%); (4) no local side-effects were observed because the concentrations of ADM and CA were low; (5) interruption of therapy was unnecessary, because whatever general side-effects were caused, they disappeared within several days of completion of treatment.