In October 2018 Natasha Cowan, from blue latitude interviewed Vicki Kiesel, as part of her exploration of the “dark side of genetic testing”. In her corresponding article, Natasha concluded “One of the barriers around direct-to consumer testing is the lack of education on genetic variants held by both physicians and the general public.” The full article can be read here.
On the 14th September 2018 Vicki Kiesel had the pleasure of presenting at the Royal Society of Medicine 5th Annual Breast Cancer Forum. Vicki discussed ‘Genetic counselling: a counsellor-patient interaction’ and explained some of the dynamics in genetic consultations particularly in relation to the importance of supporting patients emotionally.
28/08/2018 Natasha Cowan interviewed Vicki Kiesel to better understand the role of genetic counsellors within healthcare and the integration of genomics into medicine. Natasha’s subsequent an article explored the importance of genetic counselling in the new era of medicine. You can read the article here.
June 2018 Vicki Kiesel published her abstract regarding the importance of variant rate in cancer genetic testing. Variants of uncertain significance cause patients’ significantly increased anxiety and confusion, so the lower the rate the better. The abstract is published at here.
February 2018: Olaparib was approved by FDA for BRCA carriers with metastatic breast cancer, illustrating the need for increased access to BRCA testing to allow optimisation of targeted treatment.
4th January 2018: The impact collaborators, including Vicki Kiesel, showed the additional value of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing in men with BRCA1/BRCA2 pathogenic variants compared to men in the general population. These results from the IMPACT study show the benefit of genetic testing is stratifying men for by genetic risk. Click here for the full article.