Feasibility of a novel weekday-on/weekend-off oral UFT schedule as postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy for colorectal cancer

Purpose: When oral anticancer agents are used for adjuvant chemotherapy of colorectal cancer, compliance and feasibility become issues because of the long treatment time. Appropriate studies of these issues are lacking. We in vestigated compliance and feasibility during a weekday-on/weekend-off sched ule of oral UFT (uracil-tegafur) over a period of I year administered as ad juvant chemntherapy to patients with colorectal cancer. Patients and method s: A UFT dose of 600 mg/day was prescribed according to a weekday-on-weeken d-off schedule to 87 patients after potentially curative resection. Complia nce was investigated in three ways: physician interview, patient self-repor t, and chemical analysis of urine. The results were compared with the dose prescribed. Feasibility was evaluated on the basis of two indices: relative performance (RP), which was the ratio of the actual total dose taken to th e total dose planned. and individual dose intensity (IDI), which was the ra tio of the actual dose taken to the dose planned during a given period. Res ults: The compliance assessed hy physician interview and by patient self-re port conformed well with the prescribed dose, the rate of agreement among t he three compliance measures being mon than 94%. Chemical analysis of urine in 38 of the patients revealed that they were actually taking the drug. Th e RP was 0.72, and the IDI was 0.8. Conclusion: From these results, the fea sibility of the weekday-on/weekend-off schedule was judged to be good. It i s suggested that the feasibility would be even better if the dose of UFT wa s set according to body surface area.