Genetic testing can help your physicians make appropriate changes to your different cancer screenings, see if you would benefit from preventive surgeries or pharmaceutical therapies (chemoprevention, like daily aspirin to prevent colon cancer) to decrease cancer risk, and provide information for family members based on results. Genetic testing can also change cancer treatment through use of targeted therapies and surgical prophylaxis such as bilateral mastectomy in women at high risk of breast cancer if they are beneficial.
Genetic testing is broadly available for cancer patients, in particular for those with a personal or family history of rare cancer, early onset cancer, multiple primary cancers, those who have several relatives on the same side of the family with the same cancer or associated types of cancer, personal history of colon polyps, those who have Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, and those who have a relative who have tested positive for a gene mutation related to cancer risk. Genetic counseling, testing, and risk management recommendations are provided with a trained professional to help better understand you and your family’s risk of cancer, and how to proceed.
Genetic testing is available but not limited to:
- Gastrointestinal cancers
- Colorectal cancer
- Pancreatic Cancer
- Small bowel cancers
- Gastroesophageal cancer
- Genitourinary cancers
- Metastatic prostate cancer
- Renal pelvis and ureteral cancers
- Kidney cancers
- Uterine cancers
- Skin cancers
- Melanoma
- Sebaceous cancers and keratoacanthomas
- Endocrine cancers
- Paraganglioma/Pheochromocytoma
- Medullary Thyroid Cancer
- Sarcomas
- Some GIST cancers
We offer multigene panels that test for a variety of genes, some of which are specific to a certain type of cancer and others, which are associated with more than one cancer type.