Although family physicians routinely counsel patients about familial risk factors and healthy lifestyles, traditional medical education often fails to train physicians how to apply new genetic data to routine patient care. Genetic counseling helps understand how genes, birth defects, and medical conditions run in families and how they affect the family health. A genetic counselor can help a patient understand his test results to make decisions about the pregnancy and infant care. The current article acts as a quick checklist for family physicians counseling the patients.
There has been a recent explosion of knowledge in genetics. This “big bang” and its ensuing discoveries are affecting the medical understanding of both rare and common disorders. However, many new findings, especially in the realm of predictive genetic testing, have greatly outpaced medicine's ability to define what is…
