Intravesical chemoresection with 4'-epi-doxorubicin in patients with superficial bladder tumors

The authors report the preliminary data concerning a multicentric study on ablative effects of 4'-epi-doxorubicin (EPR) on superficial bladder cancer. Forty-six patients affected by multiple transitional cell superficial bladder carcinoma were treated by transurethral resection of all but one tumor, left as a marker lesion. Subsequently, an intensive local treatment with EPR and 3-month control cystoscopies with biopsies were performed. In the 47% of cases the control cystoscopy and pathology assessed the complete disappearance of marker lesions without any new occurrence whereas it is interesting to observe that the breakdown of the complete remissions into primary (67%) versus recurrent (37%) and in intravesical unpretreated (55%) versus pretreated (31%) showed important differences. It may be concluded that EPR shows a real activity against transitional cell superficial bladder carcinoma.