Nina Hallowell

Nina Hallowell
University of Oxford | OX · Big Data Institute, Ethox Centre NDPH, and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities

BSc. DPhil. MA

About

145
Publications
18,176
Reads
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Introduction
Professor of Social and Ethical Aspects of Genomics, Big Data Institute, Ethox Centre Nuffield Department of Population Health, and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford. Honorary Fellow, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh UK, Honorary Senior Tutor, Cardiff University
Additional affiliations
October 2017 - November 2017
University of Oxford
Position
  • Professor
February 2012 - April 2013
PHG Foundation
Position
  • ELSi Lead

Publications

Publications (145)
Article
Computational phenotyping (CP) technology uses facial recognition algorithms to classify and potentially diagnose rare genetic disorders on the basis of digitised facial images. This AI technology has a number of research as well as clinical applications, such as supporting diagnostic decision-making. Using the example of CP, we examine stakeholder...
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This article reports on the findings of an international workshop organised by the UK-France Genomics and Ethics Network (UK-FR GENE) in 2021. They focus specifically on how collection, storage and sharing of genomic data may pose challenges to established principles and values such as trust, confidentiality, and privacy in countries that have impl...
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Background As the use of AI becomes more pervasive, and computerised systems are used in clinical decision-making, the role of trust in, and the trustworthiness of, AI tools will need to be addressed. Using the case of computational phenotyping to support the diagnosis of rare disease in dysmorphology, this paper explores under what conditions we c...
Preprint
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An increasing number of European research projects return, or plan to return, individual genomic research results (IRR) to participants. While data access is a data subject’s right under the GDPR, and many legal and ethical guidelines allow or require participants to receive personal data generated in research, the practice of returning results is...
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There is a growing consensus among scholars, national governments, and intergovernmental organisations of the need to involve the public in decision-making around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in society. Focusing on the UK, this paper asks how that can be achieved for medical AI research, that is, for research involving the training of A...
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Digital pathology – the digitalisation of clinical histopathology services through the scanning and storage of pathology slides – has opened up new possibilities for health care in recent years, particularly in the opportunities it brings for artificial intelligence (AI)‐driven research. Recognising, however, that there is little scholarly debate o...
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Background Around 60,000 babies are born preterm (prior to 37 weeks’ gestation) each year in the UK. There is little evidence on the optimal birth mode (vaginal or caesarean section). Objective The overall aim of the CASSAVA project was to determine if a trial to define the optimal mode of preterm birth could be carried out and, if so, determine w...
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Digital Pathology (DP) is a platform which has the potential to develop a truly integrated and global pathology community. The generation of DP data at scale creates novel challenges for the histopathology community in managing, processing, and governing the use of these data. The current understanding of, and confidence in, the legal and ethical a...
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This paper is based upon interviews with twenty-seven women and men who have an inherited risk of developing gastric cancer and have had their stomach removed as a preventative measure. We describe what happens when bodily processes – digestion - are disrupted by the removal of the stomach. Interviewees' who had undergone total gastrectomy experien...
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The concept of ‘digital phenotyping’ was originally developed by researchers in the mental health field, but it has travelled to other disciplines and areas. This commentary draws upon our experiences of working in two scientific projects that are based at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute – The RADAR-AD project and The Minerva Initiati...
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Many are calling for concrete mechanisms of oversight for health research involving artificial intelligence (AI). In response, institutional review boards (IRBs) are being turned to as a familiar model of governance. Here, we examine the IRB model as a form of ethics oversight for health research that uses AI. We consider the model's origins, analy...
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A rapidly growing proportion of health research uses ‘secondary data’: data used for purposes other than those for which it was originally collected. Do researchers using secondary data have an obligation to disclose individual research findings to participants? While the importance of this question has been duly recognised in the context of primar...
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Ethical oversight of AI research is beset by a number of problems. There are numerous ways to tackle these problems, however, they leave full responsibility for ethical reflection in the hands of review boards and committees. In this paper, we propose an alternative solution: the training of ethically responsible AI researchers. We showcase this so...
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Mobile applications are increasingly regarded as important tools for an integrated strategy of infection containment in post-lockdown societies around the globe. This paper discusses a number of questions that should be addressed when assessing the ethical challenges of mobile applications for digital contact-tracing of COVID-19: Which safeguards s...
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Best practice guidance for research during pandemics or other humanitarian emergencies
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Background: Equipoise and role conflict have been previously identified as important factors in professionals' engagement with trials, inducing behaviours which can impact on recruitment. We explored these phenomena as potential explanations for the low levels of involvement of teenagers and young adults (TYA) with cancer in clinical trials in onc...
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Background Retained placenta following vaginal delivery is a major cause of postpartum haemorrhage. Currently, the only effective treatments for a retained placenta are the surgical procedures of manual removal of placenta (MROP) and uterine curettage, which are not universally available, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The object...
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Background: Retained placenta is associated with postpartum haemorrhage and can lead to significant maternal morbidity if untreated. The only effective treatment is the surgical procedure of manual removal of placenta, which is costly, requires skilled staff, requires an operative environment and is unpleasant for women. Small studies suggest that...
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People with genetic predispositions to disease are faced with uncertainty about whether, when, and to what extent an illness will actually develop. This prognostic uncertainty, combined with knowledge that preventative interventions (eg, risk-reducing surgeries for familial cancer syndromes) could significantly affect people’s lives, renders preven...
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The clinical utility of computational phenotyping for both genetic and rare diseases is increasingly appreciated; however, its true potential is yet to be fully realized. Alongside the growing clinical and research availability of sequencing technologies, precise deep and scalable phenotyping is required to serve unmet need in genetic and rare dise...
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A proportion of breast cancers are attributable to BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. Technological advances has meant that mutation testing in newly diagnosed cancer patients can be used to inform treatment plans. Although oncologists increasingly deliver treatment-focused genetic testing (TFGT) as part of mainstream ovarian cancer care, we know little abo...
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In subsection “Genetics/genomics specialists” sentence beginning “Five…” cited reference 32 (Schwarze et al. 2018) and should have been reference 34 (Carroll et al. 2016). While in subsection “The value of genomic medicine” sentence beginning “V…” should have read “‘Vassy et al….” Finally, in the same subsection, sentence beginning “Christensen and...
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Purpose: We sought to assess the readiness of the United Kingdom (UK) National Health Service to implement a Genomic Medicine Service. We conducted a systematic literature review to identify what is known about factors related to the implementation of genomic medicine in routine health care and to draw out the implications for the UK and other set...
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Background While a growing body of research has explored why people take part in clinical trials, this research has not considered how people’s understandings, motivations and agendas might influence their conduct during a trial. This is an important area of enquiry because it is now widely recognised that an intervention might lead to different cl...
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Increasing ethical attention and debate is focusing on whether individuals who take part in clinical trials should be given access to post-trial care. However, the main focus of this debate has been upon drug trials undertaken in low-income settings. To broaden this debate, we report findings from interviews with individuals (n ¼ 24) who participat...
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Evidence is accumulating of the clinical utility of single nucleotide polymorphisms to effectively stratify risk of breast cancer. Yet for this personalized polygenic information to be translated to clinical practice, consideration is needed about how this personalized risk information should be communicated and the impact on risk perception. This...
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Changes in the nature and structure of healthcare pathways have implications for healthcare professionals' jurisdictional boundaries. The introduction of treatment focused BRCA1 and 2 genetic testing (TFGT) for newly diagnosed patients with breast cancer offers a contemporary example of pathway change brought about by technological advancements in...
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Genome-wide sequencing may generate secondary findings (SFs). It is recommended that validated, clinically actionable SFs are reported back to patients/research participants. To explore publics’ perspectives on the best ways to do this, we performed a vignette study among Finnish adults. Our aim was to explore how lay people react to different type...
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Lowered costs of genomic sequencing facilitate analyzing large segments of genetic data. Ethical debate has focused on whether and what kind of incidental or secondary findings (SFs) to report, and how to obtain valid informed consent. However, people’s support needs after receiving SFs have received less attention. We explored Finnish adults’ pers...
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This paper explores patients’ views and experiences of undergoing treatment-focused BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic testing (TFGT), either offered following triaging to clinical genetics (breast cancer) or as part of a mainstreamed care pathway in oncology (ovarian cancer). Drawing on 26 in-depth interviews with patients with breast or ovarian cancer who h...
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Background: Genomic and biosocial research data about individuals is rapidly proliferating, bringing the potential for novel opportunities for data integration and use. The scale, pace and novelty of these applications raise a number of urgent sociotechnical, ethical and legal questions, including optimal methods of data storage, management and ac...
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Genome wide association studies have identified a number of common genetic variants - single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) – that combine to increase breast cancer risk. SNP profiling may enhance the accuracy of risk assessment and provides a personalized risk estimate. SNP testing for breast cancer risks may supplement other genetic tests in the...
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Introduction A retained placenta is diagnosed when the placenta is not delivered following delivery of the baby. It is a major cause of postpartum haemorrhage and treated by the operative procedure of manual removal of placenta (MROP). Methods and analysis The aim of this pragmatic, randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind UK-wide trial, with...
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Background Obtaining prospective written consent from women to participate in trials when they are experiencing an obstetric emergency is challenging. Alternative consent pathways, such as gaining verbal consent at enrolment followed, later, by obtaining written consent, have been advocated by some clinicians and bioethicists but have received litt...
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Background Insulin is generally administered to people with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) using multiple daily injections (MDIs), but can also be delivered using infusion pumps. In the UK, pumps are recommended for patients with the greatest need and adult use is less than in comparable countries. Previous trials have been small, of short duratio...
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Background: Clinical research is increasingly being undertaken in primary care settings. This development offers both benefits and challenges. The ethical challenges of occupying the roles of both clinician and researcher may be accentuated in primary care settings, where relationships are longer lasting and medical conditions are less acute. This...
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Reproductive genetic testing- PreNatal Diagnosis (PND) and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)—for CDH1 mutations associated with Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer (HDGC)is available in the UK. This qualitative interview study examined high-risk individuals’ (n = 35) views of CDH1 reproductive genetic testing. Interviewees generally regarded re...
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Background The ending of a clinical trial may be challenging, particularly if staff are required to withdraw the investigated treatment(s); however, this aspect of trial work is surprisingly under-researched. To address this gap, we explored the experiences of staff involved in closing out a trial that entailed withdrawal of treatment (insulin pump...
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For many years, familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), an inherited disorder, has been diagnosed using phenotypic features plus family history of early onset cardiovascular disease (CVD), and has been successfully treated using statin therapy. DNA testing is now available and this has been incorporated into familial cascade screening programmes in man...
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Individuals identified as at high risk of developing Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer (HDGC) are advised to undergo prophylactic surgery - have their stomach removed - in their early twenties. Research with (older) cancer patients who undergo gastrectomy for curative reasons suggests that gastric resection has a number of physical and psychosocial...
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Ethical concerns about therapeutic misconception have been raised since the early 1980s. This concept was originally described as research participants’ assumptions that decisions relating to research interventions are made on the basis of their individual therapeutic needs. The term has since been used to refer to a range of ‘misunderstandings’ th...
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Hereditary diffuse gastric cancer has an early onset and poor prognosis, therefore, individuals who carry a pathogenic (CDH1) mutation in the E-cadherin gene (CDH1) are offered endoscopic surveillance and advised to undergo prophylactic total gastrectomy (PTG) in their early to mid-twenties. Patients not ready or fit to undergo gastrectomy, or in w...
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Background Health research increasingly relies on organized collections of health data and biological samples. There are many types of sample and data collections that are used for health research, though these are collected for many purposes, not all of which are health-related. These collections exist under different jurisdictional and regulatory...
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Hope has therapeutic value because it enables people to cope with uncertainty about their future health. Indeed, hope, or therapeutic optimism (TO), is seen as an essential aspect of the provision and experience of medical care. The role of TO in clinical research has been briefly discussed, but the concept, and whether it can be transferred from c...
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Recruiting and consenting women to peripartum trials can be challenging as the women concerned may be anxious, in pain, and exhausted; there may also be limited time for discussion and decision-making to occur. To address these potential difficulties, we undertook a qualitative evaluation of the internal pilot of a trial (Got-it) involving women wh...
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Background: Engaging patients (parents/families) in treatment decisions is increasingly recognised as important and beneficial. Yet where the evidence base for treatment options is limited, as with intermittent distance exotropia (X(T)), this presents a challenge for families and clinicians. The purpose of this study was to explore how decisions a...
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General consensus exists that clinically significant germline genetic research results should be fed back to research participants. A body of literature is emerging about Australian research participants' experiences of feedback of genetic research results and factors that influence a participant's actions after receiving such information. This exp...
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In recent years, Talcott Parsons’ work has come under renewed scrutiny by sociologists who argue that his concept of the sick role has a role to play in current accounts of health and illness. In this paper we describe the ways in which Australian women who had undergone elective risk-reducing breast surgery (with or without ovarian surgery) spoke...
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The introduction of new sequencing technologies whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and whole-exome sequencing (WES) that are much less finely targeted than previous genetic tests has resulted in ethical debate about what should be done with clinically significant findings that may arise during the sequencing process. In this piece we argue that, in addi...
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Population-based genetic research may produce information that has clinical implications for participants and their family. Researchers notify participants or their next of kin (NoK) about the availability of genetic information via a notification letter; however, many subsequently do not contact a family cancer centre (FCC) to clarify their geneti...
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A newly introduced cell-free fetal DNA sequencing based non-invasive prenatal testing (DNA-NIPT) detects Down syndrome with sensitivity of 99% at early gestational stage without risk of miscarriage. Attention has been given to its public health implications; little is known from consumer perspectives. This qualitative study aimed to explore women's...
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Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the clinical management of incidental findings. Advances in the speed and sensitivity of genetic technologies have not only improved the diagnostic rate but also result in an increase in unanticipated diagnoses. Recent debate on such "incidental findings" has considered whether or not to actively searc...
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The identification of common genetic variants associated with common cancers including breast, prostate and ovarian cancers would allow population stratification by genotype to effectively target screening and treatment. As scientific, clinical and economic evidence mounts there will be increasing pressure for risk-stratified screening programmes t...
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Increased knowledge of the gene-disease associations contributing to common cancer development raises the prospect of population stratification by genotype and other risk factors. Individual risk assessments could be used to target interventions such as screening, treatment and health education. Genotyping neonates, infants or young children as par...
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Purpose: The generation of clinically significant genetic data during research studies raises a number of ethical issues about the feedback of this information to research participants. Little is known about research participants' experiences of this practice. Methods: This qualitative interview study investigated research participants' (n = 10)...
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Individual risk prediction and stratification based on polygenic profiling may be useful in disease prevention. Risk-stratified population screening based on multiple factors including a polygenic risk profile has the potential to be more efficient than age-stratified screening. In this article, we summarize the implications of personalized screeni...
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Background: Improving understanding of the genetic basis of disease susceptibility enables us to estimate individuals' risk of developing cancer and offer them disease prevention, including screening, stratified to reflect that risk. Little attention has so far been given to the implementation of stratified screening. This article reviews the issu...
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In this article we explore the concept of inter-embodiment and its potential for advancing sociological research into illness biography and genetic identity. Inter-embodiment theory views embodied knowledge as produced through relations between bodies, as opposed to originating from within the body or as the product of relations between disembodied...
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This talk will revisit some familiar issues about risk-reducing breast and ovarian surgery to manage cancer risks. I will focus upon the impact that surgery has on women’s lives and discuss their information needs. My talk will be illustrated with data collected during interviews with 40 Australian women as part of the kConFab Psychosocial study (B...
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Much has been written about the impact of risk-reducing breast and ovarian surgery on quality of life and high-risk women’s surgical decision-making, but much less is known about how this group experiences these elective procedures. In this paper we describe the ways in which women who have undergone risk-reducing breast surgery (+/- ovarian surger...
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All trials use protocols to standardize practice within and between trial centres and to enable replication of an experiment across space and time. However, while 'centre effects' have been noted in the literature, the processes and mechanisms by which trial staff convert a protocol into practice, and create 'evidence', is a relatively understudied...
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Most studies of quality of life following risk-reducing bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) and mastectomy (RRM) for inherited breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility were conducted before counseling protocols were established and included women at varying times since surgery. This study aimed to overcome these deficiencies and to provide curre...
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Familial DNA cascade screening for familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) has recently been introduced in Scotland. This study investigated index patients' experiences of DNA testing and mediating cascade screening. Thirty-eight patients with a clinical diagnosis of definite or possible FH who had undergone DNA testing in the lipid clinic took part in...
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Trial research has predominantly focused on patient and staff understandings of trial concepts and/or motivations for taking part, rather than why treatment recommendations may or may not be followed during trial delivery. This study sought to understand why there was limited attainment of the glycaemic target (HbA(1c) ≤6.5%) among patients who par...
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To explore participants' experiences of intensifying insulin therapy during the Treating to Target in Type 2 Diabetes (4-T) trial. In-depth interviews were conducted with 41 trial participants who had had their insulin therapy intensified during this trial. Data were analysed using an inductive, thematic approach. The vast majority of participants...
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To explore patients' and health professionals' experiences of initiating insulin as part of the Treating To Target in Type 2 Diabetes (4-T) randomized controlled trial. Interviews were conducted with 45 trial participants and 21 health professionals and thematically analyzed. Patients were generally psychologically insulin receptive when approached...
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Research and clinical activities are often portrayed as arising from different motivations and having different goals. This study sought to determine lay and professional understandings of research and clinical care within the translational subspecialty of cancer genetics. Fifty-nine lay research participants and 20 professional stakeholders were i...
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Accessible summary This article is about families where more than one of the boys or men in the family have a learning disability. We found that Families usually want to know the cause of the disability and to be able to give it a name. Sometimes they want to know whether other people in the family will have babies who will have a learning disabili...
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Qualitative interview study. Fifty-nine patients with a family history of cancer who attend a regional cancer genetics clinic in the UK were interviewed about their current and previous research experiences. Findings: Interviewees gave a range of explanations for research participation. These were categorised as (a) social--research participation b...
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Lobb EA, Barlow-Stewart K, Suthers G, Hallowell N. Treatment-focused DNA testing for newly diagnosed breast cancer patients: some implications for clinical practice There is accumulating evidence that women with breast cancer due to a familial BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation benefit from specific surgical and chemotherapeutic treatment strategies. However,...
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This retrospective descriptive Australian study aimed to determine predictors of nonattendance at a familial cancer clinic by men from high-risk breast/ovarian cancer families. Two hundred twenty-six men from families with a known BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation were recruited through an epidemiological database of high-risk breast cancer families and comp...
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The relationship between clinical research and clinical care is often perceived as unclear, particularly in highly technological subspecialties. This ambiguity is illustrated in cancer genetics where research protocols are frequently used to provide access to procedures that may be offered as a clinical service in other specialties. The project on...