Current Practice
The clinical setting in which patients are evaluated determines the scope of practice, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions. For the purposes of general discussion, the typical encounters between patients and genetic practitioners may involve:
- Referral to an out-patient genetics clinic (pediatric, adult, or combined) or an in-hospital consultation, most often for diagnostic evaluation.
- Specialty genetics clinics focusing on management of inborn errors of metabolism, skeletal dysplasia, or lysosomal storage diseases.
- Referral for counseling in a prenatal genetics clinic to discuss risks to the pregnancy (advanced maternal age, teratogen exposure, family history of a genetic disease), test results (abnormal maternal serum screen, abnormal ultrasound), and/or options for prenatal diagnosis (typically amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling).
- Multidisciplinary specialty clinics that include a clinical geneticist or genetic counselor (cancer genetics, cardiovascular genetics, craniofacial or cleft lip/palate, hearing loss clinics, muscular dystrophy/neurodegenerative disorder clinics).
Read more about this topic: Medical Genetics
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