Development of an Electronic Decision Aid Tool to Facilitate Mainstream Genetic Testing in Ovarian Cancer Patients.

Background: Multigene panel testing is an important component of cancer treatment plans and risk assessment, but there are many different panel options and choosing the most appropriate panel can be challenging for health care providers and patients. Electronic tools have been proposed to help patients make informed decisions about which gene panel to choose by considering their preferences and priorities.

Materials And Methods: An electronic decision aid (DA) tool was developed in line with the International Patient Decision Aids Standards collaboration.

Mainstreamed genetic testing of breast cancer patients: experience from a single surgeon's practice in a large US Academic Center.

This study evaluated the impact of mainstreamed genetic testing (MGT) on the timing and uptake of testing in an academic breast surgeon's practice. Before September 2019 (pre-MGT phase), a breast surgery practice at Massachusetts General Hospital followed a traditional model of a pre-test consultation with a genetic counselor (GC) following a referral. After September 2019 (post-MGT phase), the same practice offered patients genetic testing in a single clinical encounter with a breast surgeon.

Performance of the shared decision-making process scale for use in evaluation of hereditary cancer genetic testing decisions.

This study aimed to evaluate feasibility, acceptability, reliability, and validity of the existing four-item Shared Decision Making (SDM) Process Scale for use in evaluating genetic testing decisions. Patients from a large hereditary cancer genetics practice were invited to participate in a two-part survey after completing pre-test genetic counseling. The online survey included the SDM Process Scale and the SURE scale, a measure of decisional conflict.

Toward a better understanding of the experience of patients with moderate penetrance breast cancer gene pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants: A focus on ATM and CHEK2.

This study explored the experiences of patients with pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants in the moderate penetrance breast cancer genes, ATM and CHEK2. There were 139 eligible female patients who received genetic counseling at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Cancer Risk Assessment (MGH CCRA) from 2014 to 2018. They were sent surveys assessing their understanding of the clinical significance of their genetic test results, adherence to medical management recommendations, dissemination of genetic test results to relatives, and informational resource needs.

Transition to telephone genetic counseling services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the delivery of healthcare services, including oncology. To ensure continuity of cancer genetic counseling at a large academic medical center while also promoting the safety of patients and staff, our team transitioned to fully remote telephone genetic counseling and testing services within 48 hr. We compare differences in the six weeks following the shift to telephone genetic counseling (post-COVID) to the six weeks preceding the pandemic (pre-COVID).