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Acta Medica Medianae
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PRINCIPLES OF CLINIC GENETICS AND GENETIC COUNSELING
Ljubiša Mihajlović, Nevenka K. Mihajlović and Živojin Stanković
Institute for Biology with Human Genetics of the Faculty of Medicine, Nis
Gene-induced disorders in people are at the very basis of increased morbidity and mortality. Typical genetic disorders are complex, multi-organic with numerous symptoms and clinic presentations. This is one of many reasons why, in the eighties, new disciplines developed within genetics such as medicine genetics and clinic genetics. Medicine genetics deals with the hereditary basis of human diseases while clinic genetics studies the possibility of direct clinic help to the people with some definite genetic disorder. The basic criteria of clinic genetics are: accurate diagnosis, application of the basis principles of genetics in medical practice and genetic counseling. In clinic genetics the accurate diagnosis is the first most important step of genetic counseling. Namely, all the discussions about the nature of illness, prognosis, managing, and options of the prenatal diagnosis depend upon the accurate diagnosis. That is why the genetic approach to human diseases requires a clinic application of all the basic principles of genetics that would contribute to the realization of the basic goal of clinic genetics, that is, to adequate genetic counseling. Genetic counseling represents a communication process directed to the problems of people with genetic disorders, that is, with the risk of appearance of the same diseases in their families. This process comprises attempts made by one or more professionally trained experts to help the member or the whole family understand the medical facts that characterize a particular disorder including the diagnosis, probable courses of the disease development and estimates of possible alternatives of reoccurrence of the same disorder.
Key words: Genetic counseling, Clinic genetics, principle of indirection |