scared0304 wrote:... My GI doctor did say that I needed to tell my siblings to get screened for polyps and cancer. Should I consider genetic testing? Would my insurance cover it considering my history? ... Any thoughts on that?
I'm sorry, but I don't have much information about genetic testing. I never had it done, and my doctor said that in my case it wouldn't be necessary or particularly useful, so I have not done much research on it. What I seem to remember, though, is that there are two different scenarios for genetic testing.
In one scensrio, they are focusing on the genetic mutations of the tumor itself, so they need to have part of a tumor to analyze. If a patient has never had a tumor, then there is no way to do that type of genetic test, and you can't ask your children to have that type of test either because they don't yet have any tumors.
Then there's another scenario where they can do a different type of genetic testing on blood samples or specimens of normal tissue. This kind of test can be done on anyone, whether they have cancer or not, but I think the test is very expensive (but I'm not at all sure) and insurance may not pay for it unless you have a good reason for doing it.
Of course, the objectives are different in the two cases, since they are looking for different types of mutations in the two scenarios. I'm sorry, but I don't have any more details than that.
In your case you have only a very small polyp, and I'm not sure what they can do with that with respect to genetic testing. They can look at the specimen with an electron microscope to determine its cell type, dysplasia, etc., but I'm not sure that they can do anything for genetic testing,since it is not yet a tumor, and probably not large enough to provide enough tissue to go through a formal genetic analysis procedure. Others with more experience in this area might have something more to say.