Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I am Anna McGill, a Genetic counselor here at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center.
As a genetic counselor, it is my job to help women and men with a personal or family history
of cancer.
In certain cases, cancer can be attributed to a change in a gene.
These suspicious cancers largely occur at young ages, with multiple family members affected,
over multiple generations.
These cancers often come clustered with specific types being more common in occurrence. For
example, a change in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene may predispose individuals to develop breast
and ovarian cancer.
When I see a patient that fits this description, we talk about her options.
For most genes that cause a cancer predisposition syndrome, blood tests can be taken to look
for specific changes in the gene.
If a change is found, then we know that that patient is at an increased risk for cancers
associated with the syndrome.
If an individual is found to carry a change in a cancer predisposition gene, there are
several options to decrease the chance that that individual will develop cancer.
Both increased screening and preventative surgical measures have proved to be effective
methods to decrease the incidence of cancer.