Genetic Counseling Provided by Non-Specialist Reduces Ovarian Cancer Testing Burden

A study presented at the ESMO Asia 2017 Congress found that patients with ovarian cancer who receive genetic counseling from non-genetic clinicians reported similar satisfaction compare to those who saw a genetic clinician.

The researchers sought to better understand how to deliver more efficient ovarian cancer screening and genetic testing given new recommendations and the availability of more targeted therapies.

“In the past, genetic testing in ovarian cancer was limited to a small number of patients with the aim of identifying relatives at risk,” Soo Chin Lee, MBBS, MRCP, senior consultant at the National University Cancer Institute in Singapore, said in a press release. “Now that there is a drug to treat cancer patients with BRCA mutations, genetic counseling and testing is recommended for all patients with epithelial ovarian cancer. This has increased the number of patients who qualify for testing and thus specialized centers have become overloaded.”

The researchers said that one in nine patients with ovarian cancer carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation and four in 10 carriers do not have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. Genetic counseling help connect patients with experts and genetic testing that can determine the presence of the BRCA mutation and help targeted treatments.

During the study, the researchers included 208 ovarian cancer patients who were connected with 70 non-genetic clinicians from 29 local hospitals across Malaysia.

Study results showed that most patients who saw a trained, but not an expert geneticist, were equally as satisfied compared to patients who saw an expert clinical geneticist.

 “Mainstreaming genetic testing and counseling to local hospitals is a strategy to cope with this increased volume of patients,” Dr Lee concluded.

—David Costill

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