Today, I link to and embed the CDC‘s Does Your Family Health History Put You At Risk?
All that follows is from the above resource.
Does Your Family Health History Put You At Risk?
Collect your family health history of breast, ovarian, and other cancers and share this information with your doctor. You can inherit BRCA and other mutations from your mother or your father, so be sure to include information from both sides of your family. Include your close relatives: parents, sisters, brothers, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. If you have had breast, ovarian, or other cancers, make sure that your family members know about your diagnosis.
Tell your doctor if you have a personal or family health history of any of the following:
- Breast cancer, especially at a younger age (age 50 or younger)
- Triple-negative breast cancer in women (Triple-negative cancers are a type of breast cancer that lack estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2.)
- Cancer in both breasts
- Breast cancer in a male relative
- Ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer
- Pancreatic cancer
- Metastatic or high-grade prostate cancer
- Breast, ovarian, pancreatic, or high-grade prostate cancer among multiple blood relatives
- Ashkenazi or Eastern European Jewish ancestry
- A known BRCA or other cancer-related mutation in the family
You can use the My Family Health Portrait tool to collect your family health history information and share this information with your doctor and other family members. Update your family health history information on a regular basis and let your doctor know if any new cases of breast, ovarian, pancreatic, or prostate cancer occur.
What Can You Do If You Are Concerned About Your Risk?
If your doctor decides that your family health history makes you more likely to get breast, ovarian, and other cancers, he or she may refer you for genetic counseling. Even if your doctor doesn’t recommend genetic testing and counseling, your family health history of breast cancer can affect when you start mammography screening.
The genetic counselor can use your family health history information to determine your possible cancer risks and whether you might consider genetic testing to find out if you have a BRCA1, BRCA2, or other mutation. In some cases, the genetic counselor might recommend genetic testing using a panel that looks for mutations in several genes in addition to BRCA1 and BRCA2. Genetic testing is most useful if first performed on someone in your family who has had breast or ovarian cancer. If this relative has a BRCA1, BRCA2, or other mutation, then their close relatives can be offered testing for that mutation. If they do not have a BRCA1, BRCA2 or other mutation, then their relatives may not need to be tested. BRCA genetic counseling and testing is often, but not always, covered without cost sharing by many health plans under the Affordable Care Act.
Most breast and ovarian cancer is not caused by inherited mutations, so genetic testing will not help most women with a family health history of breast and ovarian cancer. Genetic testing will not identify the cause for some hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, because the genes affected in these cancers are not yet known.
