Huge Underuse of Germline Testing for Cancer Patients
Fewer than 7% of patients newly diagnosed with cancer are tested for germline genetic mutations, and the percentage tested was even lower among racial and ethnic minorities, a huge study has found.
Information from germline genetic testing could affect a patient's cancer care. For example, such testing could indicate that targeted therapies would be beneficial, and it would have implications for close relatives who may carry the same genes.
The finding that so few patients with newly diagnosed cancer were tested comes from an analysis of data on more than 1.3 million individuals across two US states. The data were taken from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry.
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