Identification and referral of families at high risk for cancer susceptibility.

Purpose: Obtainment of family history and accurate assessment is essential for the identification of families at risk for hereditary cancer. Our study compared the extent to which the family cancer history in the physician medical record reflected that entered by patients directly into a touch-screen family history computer program.

Patients And Methods: The study cohort consisted of 362 patients seen at a comprehensive cancer center ambulatory clinic over a 1-year period who voluntarily used the computer program and were a mixture of new and return patients.