HYPHAE
Book a demo
Families
Cascade testing: helping families pass on the news
When a woman carries an inherited variant, her relatives may too. Most of them never get tested.
The HYPHAE team
·
·
5
min read
Each first-degree relative of someone with an inherited variant, such as BRCA1 or BRCA2, has a one in two chance of carrying it. Testing them, starting with the closest, is called cascade testing.
In practice, uptake is low. In one Italian study, 22.8% of at-risk relatives of BRCA carriers went on to be tested. The news often stops with the woman who was tested first.
Why the message gets lost
• She doesn’t know how to explain the result.
• Some relatives are distant, or the family doesn’t talk about illness.
• Relatives don’t know where to go or what to bring.
What helps
• A clear, written family letter that explains the result and how to get tested.
• Choosing when and to whom to send it, one relative at a time.
• A care team that can see who has been told, with the woman’s consent.
In HYPHAE, the woman writes and sends family letters from her app, and her care team sees which relatives have been informed.
Run your high-risk programme on HYPHAE
Your protocol, our coordination. See it with your own pathways in a 45-minute demo.
Book a demo
More from the blog
·
6
min read
Why women at high risk get lost between appointments
Follow-up for high breast cancer risk lasts decades and crosses many services. The gaps between them are where women disappear.
·
7
min read
Beyond BRCA: the eight routes to high breast cancer risk
BRCA1 and BRCA2 get the headlines, but high-risk clinics follow women for many other reasons. Each route needs its own plan.
·
5
min read
What Europe’s CHOICE project tells us about information for BRCA carriers
An EU4Health project in Portugal, Czechia and Greece is mapping what women with a BRCA variant need to make informed choices.