Welcome to the home of the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC). From this page, you can get information on and download the latest version of EPIC.


What is EPIC?

The Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC) is a comprehensive instrument designed to evaluate patient function and bother after prostate cancer treatment. Content from the original UCLA-Prostate Cancer Index (PCI) was expanded with guidance from a development cohort of localized prostate cancer patients and an expert panel comprised of urological oncologists, radiation oncologists (including brachytherapy expertise), survey researchers, and prostate cancer nurses. These experts, patients, and review of the literature suggested a need to augment the UCLA-PCI with items to capture additional concerns relevant to brachytherapy, external beam radiation, radical prostatectomy, and androgen deprivation. Accordingly, the UCLA-PCI was supplemented with specific items addressing irritative and obstructive voiding symptoms (the original UCLA-PCI had queried principally incontinence only in urinary function assessment), hematuria, additional bowel symptoms (to improve the suboptimal bowel function scale from the original UCLA-PCI) and hormonal symptoms. Symptom-specific bother items corresponding to each symptom item were added to elicit multi-item bother scales for each HRQOL domain. Responses and comments from the development cohort were incorporated to derive the final instrument: the Expanded Prostate cancer Index Composite (EPIC).


EPIC Instruments

EPIC Versions
Description
EPIC-2.2002.pdf Most Recent Version of EPIC
EPIC-26-6.2002.pdf 26-item short-form version of EPIC
EPIC-AUASI-SF12-2.2002.pdf      EPIC + SF12 and AUASI
EPIC-Urinary-2.2002.pdf EPIC - Urinary Domain only
EPIC-Bowel-2.2002.pdf EPIC - Bowel Domain only
EPIC-Sexual-2.2002.pdf EPIC - Sexual Domain only
EPIC-Hormonal-2.2002.pdf EPIC - Hormonal Domain only
EPIC-Demog-2.2002.pdf EPIC - Demographics add-on*

*This intrument can be added on to the end of any of the other EPIC instruments to collect demographic information.

Click here for a list of updates.

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Peer-reviewed Articles

Articles
Citation
Validation.pdf "Development and Validation of the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC) for Comprehensive Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life in Men with Prostate Cancer", Urology. 56: 899-905, 2000.
Cross-sectional.pdf    "Comprehensive comparison of health-related quality of life after contemporary therapies for localized prostate cancer ", Journal of Clinical Oncology. 20(2): 557-66, 2002.
Brachytherapy.pdf    "Neoadjuvant hormonal therapy and older age are associated with adverse sexual health-related quality-of-life outcome after prostate brachytherapy ", Urology. 59: 480-4, 2002.
Radical Prostatectomy.pdf    "Determinants of Long-Term Sexual HRQOL After Radical Prostatectomy Measured by a Validated Instrument", Journal of Urology. 169: 1453-7, 2003.

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Scoring Utilities

Utility
Description
EPIC-Scoring-2.2002.pdf    Scoring Documentation
Scoring-2.2002.sas SAS Macro for scoring EPIC*
Scoring-epic26-6.2002.sas SAS Macro for scoring EPIC-26*

* Choose the 'Save to Disk' option after clicking on the SAS Macro name. If your browser displays the macro on the screen as a text file. Choose File -> Save As, and then choose a location to save the macro.

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Sample Size Table & Suggested Endpoints

 

If less than 100% reponse rate is anticipated, then sample sizes will need to be adjusted. For example, an expected 75% response rate at 2 years for a study with a single endpoint and 80% power would require 86 subjects (64/0.75 = 85.33)

Number of EPIC domains as primary endpoints Domain-specific significance level (for overall significance of 5%) Potential Endpoints Required Sample Size Per Treatment Group (Based on Effect Size of 0.5)
80% Power 90% Power
1 0.05 Any 1 of the summary scores - Urinary, Bowel, Sexual, Hormonal 64 86
4 0.0125 Urinary, Bowel, Sexual, and Hormonal Summary Scores 91 116
5 0.01 Urinary Irritative, Urinary Incontinence, Bowel, Sexual, and Hormonal Summary Scores 96 121
6 0.0083 Urinary Irritative, Urinary Incontinence, Bowel, Sexual, and Hormonal Summary Scores and SF-12 PCS 99 125
10 0.005 Urinary Irritative, Urinary Incontinence, and Function and Bother subscales for Urinary, Bowel, Sexual, and Hormonal Domains 109 136
12 0.0042 Urinary Irritative, Urinary Incontinence, Function and Bother subscales for Urinary, Bowel, Sexual, and Hormonal Domains, and SF-12 PCS and MCS Scores 112 140
 


Control-based Norms and Other Statistics

Document Description
Norms.pdf    Characteristics of EPIC domain-specific summary and subscale scores for 112 controls without prostate cancer

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Validation of EPIC-26 (EPIC Short Form)

Document Description
epic26web.pdf    Statistics for the validation process of the EPIC-26

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does EPIC stand for?
EPIC stands for the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite.

What is EPIC?
EPIC is a comprehensive instrument designed to evaluate patient function and bother after prostate cancer treatment.

Am I allowed to make copies of EPIC?
Yes, you are free to make copies and distribute EPIC.

Do I need to pay a fee to use EPIC?
No, there is no fee required to use EPIC.

When reporting my findings, what article should I reference?
For any manuscript published that uses EPIC, you should reference the EPIC validation paper published in the December 2000 issue of Urology. The full reference is:

Wei J, Dunn R, Litwin M, Sandler H, and Sanda M. "Development and Validation of the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC) for Comprehensive Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life in Men with Prostate Cancer", Urology. 56: 899-905, 2000.

How come I cannot open the PDF files?
This is most likely due to the fact that you are either not using Adobe Acrobat Reader or are using a previous version of the reader. These files were created using version 4.0 of Adobe Acrobat, so version 4.0x or higher of the reader is required to view them. This is available as a FREE download, which can be obtained by clicking on the following icon:


Contact Information

For information regarding the use or interpretation of EPIC, please contact one of the following people:

Martin G. Sanda, M.D. John T. Wei, M.D. Mark S. Litwin, M.D., M.P.H.
Division of Urology University of Michigan UCLA Department of Urology
Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center 2916 Taubman Center Box 951738
330 Brookline Ave 1500 E. Medical Center Dr. Los Angeles, CA 90095-1738
Boston, MA 02215      Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0330      Phone: (310) 794-7960
Phone: (617) 667-2960 Phone: (734) 615-3040 Fax: (310) 206-5343
Fax: (617) 667-3013 Fax: (734) 936-9127 Email: mlitwin@mednet.ucla.edu
Email: msanda@bidmc.harvard.edu Email: jtwei@med.umich.edu  

For information on the use of the SAS scoring macro, please contact:

Rodney L. Dunn, M.S.
300 N. Ingalls, 8D15
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0473
Phone: (734) 615-1396
Fax: (734) 936-9582
Email: rldunn@umich.edu


users since March 12, 2001.