Should You Consider a Cancer Risk Assessment?
A cancer risk assessment could provide you with more information about your cancer risk, and can guide you to appropriate management of those risks. To determine if a cancer risk assessment is right for you, we have developed the following guidelines.
You are likely to be appropriate for a cancer risk assessment if you have a history of:
- A family with a known pathogenic or likely pathogenic variant in a cancer gene
- Individuals with specific cancers, such as
- Breast cancer
- Especially for those diagnosed at a young age (under 50), with triple‑negative breast cancer, or multiple primary or male breast cancers
- Ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer
- Pancreatic cancer
- Prostate cancer
- Metastatic, high‑risk, or very high‑risk localized prostate cancer.
- Colorectal cancer or Endometrial cancer
- Especially with features suggestive of Lynch syndrome (e.g., early onset, multiple Lynch‑related tumors, abnormal MMR/IHC or MSI‑H).
- Gastric and other GI cancers
- Gastric cancer with features or family history or in the setting of polyposis or multiple related tumors.
- Breast cancer
- Individuals with colon polyposis
- Individuals with strong, patterned family histories (even if personally unaffected)
- Multiple relatives with the same or related cancers
- Early‑onset cancers in the family (under 50)
- Clustering of hallmark hereditary patterns
- Suspicious small families or limited information
