The first reports of familial cardiac disorders appeared over 60 years
ago. Since then, knowledge on cardiogenetic disorders has increased
tremendously. And now cardiogenetics is a rapidly expanding field,
including the familial cardiomyopathies, arrhythmias, congenital heart
diseases and cardiovascular disorders. Most of these disorders have an
autosomal dominant inheritance pattern. In the last decade many genes
involved in these disorders have been identified and more discoveries
are sure to follow.
The growing insight in the genetic conditions of the cardiovascular
system has led to a substantial increase in the number of patients
referred to clinical genetic departments for genetic counselling and DNA
diagnostics. Close collaboration of departments of cardiology and
genetics resulted in the initiation of multidisciplinary cardiogenetic
outpatient clinics to provide the optimum care and facilitate family
studies of hereditary cardiologic conditions. This way family studies of
more and more adult patients could be initiated which led to increasing
numbers of at risk relatives visiting the cardiogenetic units.
Similarly, the cardiogenetic units were involved in counselling and
family studies of the families of paediatric patients. Over the years
the total number of cardiogenetic counselling sessions rose from 53 in
2000 to 482 in 2008 at the department of clinical genetics of the
Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. In 2007 that number made up 12.6%
of the total number of counselling sessions in Rotterdam.
This is not only a local trend, it is observed nationwide. According to
the numbers of the Dutch Society of Clinical Genetics (VKGN) the number
of cardiogenetic counselling sessions rose from 538 in 2000,
representing 4.5% of the total amount of counselling sessions, to 3216
in 2008, rising to 11.8% of all counselling sessions.http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19866/100625_Hoedemaekers%2C%20Yvonne%20Maria.pdf
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