You are not entitled to a blood test without referral first to the genetic team. GPs cannot do the actual test and a referral to the genetic team is usually from your consultant. If you are positive then they will extend testing to immediate family members, but only after counselling and thorough investigation of family history.
If you are diagnosed at a young age you are offered testing. But randomly testing without a diagnosis and without a known gene carrier in your immediate family it’s not recommended.
A referral to genetic testing does not guarantee you will have a test. You have to fill in an extensive questionnaire so the genetic team can work out your individual risk.
If a member of your extended family has tested positive to one of the genes they will then work out whether it is possible that you may have inherited the gene.
Factors that are important are the age of diagnosis and the type of breast cancer.
If all the members of your family who have had breast cancer were diagnosed post menopausally the likelihood of having the gene is incredibly low.
Not all cancers are related so those relatives are discounted.
My DSis had breast cancer at 34, she was automatically tested because of her age, she was negative. She was tested again when she had cancer 20yrs later. Her initial diagnosis was for ovarian cancer and gene, not known of at her first test, was tested for. She was negative. I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 57, was referred for assessment because of my sister but since she was negative and I was post menopause I had a much higher risk of spontaneous cancer unrelated to genetics, I wasn’t high risk so gene testing wasn’t advised.
Our chance of developing cancer regardless of genes is very high. But it increases the older we get. Which is why we have a screening service available to all women.
For anyone who has a sister or mother who has had breast cancer you are generally offered early monitoring through a family clinic. Because my sister was diagnosed at 34 when I was 38 I had an annual check up with the family clinic and was offered a yearly mammogram until I was 50 when I was transferred to the main screening service. So I was effectively offered the same screening opportunity someone with the BRCA gene is offered
The genetic team have looked at family history on 3 occasions and have not seen a pattern suggesting gene involvement however they are happy for us to be re referred if further genes are identified that fit our family history.
The genetics team are a national body and when you are referred they ask permission to contact immediate family to get consent to pull their medical history to do a full assessment. It takes a bit of time. It’s only once they have done the research that you are referred for gene testing.If my sister had had a positive result after her two diagnosis’s then we would have been offered the test. Unfortunately the ovarian cancer turned out to be pancreatic cancer and we lost her soon after. Again her gene testing for the newer gene was negative.