A woman’s physician ordered multi-gene panel testing due to her family history of cancer and told her that the lab had found two “errors” in the PALB2 gene. Compared to the general population, patients with a pathogenic variant in PALB2 have between...
An oncologist referred an endometrial cancer patient to a genetic counselor because she was diagnosed at a young age – before age 50. The patient had already undergone surgical treatment before the oncologist referred her to a genetic counselor. After taking a...
A woman in her 20s was concerned about her risk for breast cancer because her mother had previously had it. She saw a medical oncologist and wanted to be tested to see if she had inherited any pathogenic genetic variants that could increase her risk for developing...
A 44-year-old woman with breast cancer came to see a surgeon to discuss risk-reducing surgical options. Three years earlier, she had also been diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer. Now, because of her breast cancer diagnosis, the patient had come from a small,...
A 60-year-old woman with breast cancer and a history of various cancers in her family came to see a genetic counselor to discuss genetic testing to guide her treatment and risk management. The woman also had two café-au-lait macules, a birthmark that can occur in...
A 27-year-old woman, who five years earlier had learned she harbored a pathogenic variant in the BRCA1 gene, was now considering removing her breasts and ovaries to reduce her risk for breast and ovarian cancer. She came to see a genetic counselor to discuss her...
