European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

EVALUATING FAMILY HISTORY QUESTIONNAIRE VERSUS FAMILY PEDIGREE INTERVIEW FOR GENETIC DISORDERS IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE, QASSIM REGION, SAUDI ARABIA

K. G. Mahmoud, Dr. Mohammed Al Alfi*, Fawzy Sharaf and K. Chandra Sekhar

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The use of family history as screening tool (pedigree or questionnaire) has been shown to increase the likelihood of detecting a patient at high risk of developing an inherited medical condition by 20% compared with medical record review alone. Objectives: 1.To assess the ability of the current used Family History Questionnaire, to identify genetic risk in the study population 2. assess the ability of family pedigree interview with patient, to identify genetic risk and compare the ability to identify genetic risk between family pedigree interview and currently used questionnaire. Methodology: Institutional based descriptive study, compared a random sample of reviewer currently used family history questionnaire in Primary Health Care (PHC) with standardized family history, pedigree questionnaire for evaluating risk of common genetic diseases among Qassim population. Same participant fills both questionnaire during the period from March 2015 to August 2015 among 289 participants. Results: currently used family file folders revealed that nearly 61.9% of total files had a family history of diabetes and 53% had a history of hypertension also 15.6% had asthma history. With the the involvement of Family Pedigree interview revealed that history of Genetic diseases 5.9% and Down syndrome was 5.9% and diabetes was 51.9%. There was significant difference was noticed with family pedigree interview. In comparison with regularly used family history questionnaire in primary care unit our study genetic family history questionnaire was succeeded in measuring familial genetic risk factors in higher percent for non-insulin dependent diabetes, cancer (colon breast, prostate, varies, etc.), hypertension and coronary heart diseases. Conclusions: Based on the study results, the currently used family record folders which were available in PHC not focussed on genetic diseases family history only focused on few selected diseases. Good evaluation of familial genetic risk is crucial to assess the potentiality of patient to get diseases by assessing genetic risk factors and in that order the physician may find preventive measures to decrease his patient disease potentiality in terms of reduction of cost expenditure, premature deaths and quality of productive life .

Keywords: Genetic risk; Family pedigree, PHC, Different diseases, Qassim Region, Saudia Arabia.