Clarity at different Stages
It is a well-known fact that genetic testing is a lens that helps the clinician look at the cancer more closely. It is the clarity that genetic testing provides that helps the patients in different ways, may it be hereditary risk prediction even before the cancer has hit an individual or in the differential diagnosis, prognosis and therapy selection at an early stage or therapy monitoring and disease surveillance for relapse post the initial therapeutic steps.
Growing awareness of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) in India has led to a significant increase in the adoption of BRCA1/BRCA2 testing and hereditary cancer gene panel testing in recent years. While these tests can help guide treatment decisions, one of their most important applications is identifying inherited genetic variants that may increase an individual’s lifetime risk of developing certain cancers. Though some look at this as an unrequired knowledge, others pull their socks up and start preventive measures right up-front and be on high surveillance. This is the stage we have an upper hand over cancer in this head-to-head fight.
When it comes to early-stage cancer, what genetic testing provides in terms of clarity is the differential diagnosis, prognosis (to understand whether the cancer will be aggressive or not), and therapy selection, all having an application on the cancer management steps a clinician would take. An accurate differential diagnosis helps select a proper course of action, an accurate prognosis prediction helps a clinician understand the extent of aggressiveness of the treatment, whereas some gene mutations are indicative of which exact therapy to choose to combat cancer.
Routinizing Genetic Tests
While clinicians have increasingly started amalgamating genetic tests in their practices, there is a major portion of patients who are not aware of the broad applications of genetic testing. Being aware, sure, will be a first step towards changing the term ‘survivor’ to ‘fighter’.
