Medical Genetics - Current Practice

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

Famous quotes containing the words current and/or practice:

    It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.
    Terri Apter (20th century)

    Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.
    Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)