Patient and Clinician Perspectives on the Communication of Genomic Results in Cancer Care

Purpose

Patients diagnosed with advanced cancer are increasingly being offered comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) to determine whether they are eligible for biomarker-informed treatment. The communication of CGP results to patients can be suboptimal and associated with patient anxiety. This study explores patient, clinician and public experiences of CGP and preferred methods of communicating results.

Methods

Focus groups were held with patients and carers, with the resulting data evaluated by thematic analysis. Concurrently, a questionnaire was designed and distributed to 60 clinicians involved in CGP studies.

Results

Twenty-four patients with a current/previous cancer diagnosis and 10 carers attended the focus groups. Experience with CGP was minimal and often limited to what participants had read on the internet. Patients/carers felt the delivery of results was very complicated and emphasised emotional facets to communicating CGP results and the wish for delivery to be tailored to them. Questionnaire responses were received from 10 UK sites. 92% of clinicians ensured patients received their CGP results, with the majority (57%) returning all CGP results, but 30% would only report on actionable mutations. Results were delivered face to face by 38% of clinicians, while other methods included letters, phone calls, or a combination of approaches. Many clinicians expressed an interest in receiving training on how to feedback CGP results.

Conclusion

There is a need to develop and implement a standardised approach to returning CGP results, as well as increasing healthcare professional education and confidence with interpreting CGP. Due to the increasing access to CGP as part of routine healthcare, it is essential clinicians feel confident to interpret this information and that patients have results returned to them in an understandable format.