[The genetic area of the Italian Association of Hospital Cardiologists. The family history in modern cardiology--part I].
The family history constitutes the first step in the cardiologist's clinical approach to the patient and is highly informative both for monogenic and multifactorial disorders. A detailed interview is a time-consuming activity: in their daily practice, cardiologists may have 10, 20 or more interviews to complete. The patient tends to concentrate his attention on his own clinical history, rather than on that of his family, and explaining the importance of the role of a well analyzed family history in the modern cardiology can be difficult and may further increase the loss of time. However, the information about a given phenotype revealed by a detailed and non-confounding family history is essential to define the inheritance of monogenic diseases, to calculate the penetrance, even when the disease genes are unknown, or to evaluate "clinically cryptic" risks in multifactorial diseases. The Genetic Area of the Italian Association of Hospital Cardiologists proposes a novel approach to the family history of the patients: a guide form to be filled in by the patient whilst awaiting for clinical evaluation or immediately after admission to the cardiology department. The proposal will be articulated in three parts: one dedicated to general considerations on the confounding or incomplete evaluation of potentially useful data from the family history, one specifically dedicated to cardiomyopathies, and one containing a model of the form to be eventually adopted by the cardiological scientific societies.
Pisani
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Dipartimento di Cardiologia, IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia.
Repetto
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Arbustini
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D002309:Cardiology; D005823:Genetics; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008487:Medical History Taking; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D012955:Societies, Medical