SALALAH, Oct 31 - The genetic counselling clinic at Sultan Qaboos Hospital puts stress on regular counselling to avoid worsening of gene related diseases and assured that early medical interventions were helpful in managing such diseases.
It advised the parents, guardians and other caretakers to be in touch with the genetic counselling specialists, who play a vital link between the lab, hospital and the family in such cases.
“As genetic counselling specialists, we receive general patients, record their history, make files and refer them to specialised departments such as heart, kidney, gastro, where thorough examination of patients is done on the basis of family history and number of years the disease is travelling from one generation to another,” said Amira Ramis Bait Zaid, who is a genetic counselling specialist at SQH.
Amira put stress on moral support to such patients as they are vulnerable to social pressure and prone to make mistakes before and after pregnancy, as the disease travels from one generation to another.
Among common genetic disorders are Down Syndrome, genetic blood diseases like lack of haemoglobin in the blood and sickle cell and lack of yeast bean map in addition to the genetic cancer of lung and breast and fetal abnormalities and frequent fall of pregnancy.
“The role of genetic counselling specialists has become vital in any hospital system as they are the members of the medical team who have been prepared academically and medically to provide genetic counselling to individuals and families who are looking for information regarding genetic diseases or abnormalities at birth services,” she said.
Multiple cases in which the intervention of genetic counselling department is needed are children with genetic diseases and couples living with a defect in chromosome and have children with some deficiencies.
Such therapy is very useful in dealing with the families that have a history of the disease and hereditary of a particular type in previous generations or relatives and mothers who suffer from repeated projections of more than three or more deaths during pregnancy.
The genetic counselling experts called for necessary medical examination before marriage to rule out any such possibility. They called for the need to raise awareness about the genetic diseases and educate people to prevent such a situation with the best possible medical options.
Kaushalendra Singh
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