More than 500 families have benefited in Cuba with the oncogenetic service, created to identify hereditary cancer and achieve early detection of cancer and prevention of tumors.
Marta Sonia Robaina, head of the oncogenetic service, told the Prensa Latina news agency, that the consultations in Cuba are offered by the National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology (INOR), in Havana, with very good results for both patients and their families.
‘Taking into account that cancer is a multifactorial disease that involves both genetic and environmental factors, not only we make diagnosis and estimate the risk, but also we target lifestyles’, she said.
Robaina, also specialist in clinical genetics, said that the main treatments target hereditary breast cancer, hereditary colorectal cancer, retinoblastoma and familial prostate cancer.
According to Robaina, it is not the same hereditary as family-related cancer, because the latter may be caused by similar lifestyles shared by the people, for example, when a family is affected by smokers, which determines the cancer rate.
‘Meanwhile, hereditary cancer is linked to the presence of a gen that is inherited by descendants,’ said Robaina, who has 30 years of work. ‘Although this service is currently offered at INOR, we have a network of health genetics, with geneticists in all the provinces,’ she said.
Robaina said that patients may be sent to the oncogenetic service in Cuba by family doctors, geneticists from the provinces, oncologists, or the rest of specialties.
Robaina said that the experience achieved by INOR is shared in academic exchanges in other countries and also with the Institute of Biological Medical Research Veracruz Region (Mexico), for the creation of an oncogenetic center. (Taken from Prensa Latina)
