Hereditary breast cancer usually allows marriage, but the decision to have offspring should be taken in the context of one’s condition. Patients with this disease have significant mutation-prone disease-causing genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and can pass them on to their offspring.
Patients with a family history of the disease should therefore undergo genetic counselling and genetic testing, and the consultant will combine human genomic techniques and knowledge of human genetics to guide them through prenatal diagnosis, marriage, pregnancy, birth and infant care. Third generation IVF technology combined with pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT) and pre-implantation whole genome haplotype analysis (PGH) can screen for fertilised eggs that do not contain the genes responsible for hereditary breast cancer and block the transmission of the disease-causing genes.