A woman in her 40s visited a general surgeon for non-cancer related reasons and was assessed for her hereditary risk for cancer. The patient did not have a personal history of cancer, but her mother, who is in her 60s, had recently been diagnosed with...
During a visit with a new primary care physician, a 45-year-old man told his doctor that he had a family history of cancer and Lynch syndrome, a hereditary condition that increases the risk for colon, uterine, and other cancers. He also recounted that he had tested...
Dr. William G. Kaelin, Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Dr. Gregg L. Semenza won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work related to a genetic condition called von Hippel-Lindau syndrome (VHL). VHL is a hereditary cancer syndrome that is...
In 2019, the field of personalized medicine continued to grow with the market launch of more than two dozen drugs targeting novel genomic alterations and numerous genetic tests to determine whether patients are at risk for serious diseases like cancer, and whether...
While reviewing the breast cancer screening recommendations for a 28-year-old woman, a nurse practitioner at a high-risk breast clinic noted incongruencies in the family’s understanding of genetic test results. The woman had been recommended to the clinic based...