Angelina Jolie’s decision to share her decision to have a preventative double mastectomy has garnered a lot of attention across the world and in the Maritimes.
As a result, the people who do gene testing say they have had a substantial increase in the number of inquiries about what is involved as well as a spike in requests to have the test.
“Typically during a week we may get a handful of calls related to all sorts of different hereditary conditions, but in the last couple of days, we've gotten about 10 to 15 calls from people specifically about hereditary breast cancer. So, a little unusual for us here,” says Kelly Collins, a genetic counsellor in Halifax.
Staff at Maritime Medical Genetics have been fielding calls from patients, labs and family doctors, who have been getting even more calls from their patients.
“Some from patients who are wanting to be referred, some from patients who have already been referred and wanting to know the status of their referral,” says Collins.
However, Dr. Lynette Penny cautions against a flood of panic-induced calls.
“Most people who have a breast cancer, it's not due to a clear-cut underlying genetic cause, like a mutation of BRCA 1 or 2,” says Penny. “Still, in the vast majority of cases, it would be the breast cancer that all women are at that 12 per cent risk of developing over the course of their lifetime.”
However, Penny says she hopes Jolie’s announcement will trigger people to take a more careful look at their family history.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kayla Hounsell
