Browsing by Author "Giordano, Jessica L."

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    Clinical genetic counselor experience in the adoption of telehealth in the United States and Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic
    (Wiley, 2021) Ma, Daria; Ahimaz, Priyanka R.; Mirocha, James M.; Cook, Lola; Giordano, Jessica L.; Mohan, Pooja; Cohen, Stephanie A.; Medical and Molecular Genetics, School of Medicine
    The COVID‐19 pandemic has significantly impacted the service delivery model (SDM) of clinical genetic counseling across the United States and Canada. A cross‐sectional survey was distributed to 4,956 genetic counselors (GCs) from the American Board of Genetic Counselors and Canadian Association of Genetic Counselors mailing lists in August 2020 to assess the change in utilization of telehealth for clinical genetic counseling during the COVID‐19 pandemic compared with prior to the pandemic. Data from 411 eligible clinical genetic counselors on GC attitudes and their experiences prior to and during the pandemic were collected and analyzed to explore the change in SDM, change in appointment characteristics, change in billing practices, GC perceived benefits and limitations of telehealth, and prediction of future trends in SDM in the post‐pandemic era. The study showed the overall utilization of audiovisual and telephone encounters increased by 43.4% and 26.2%, respectively. The majority of respondents who provided audiovisual and telephone encounters reported increased patient volume compared with prior to the pandemic, with an average increase of 79.4% and 42.8%, respectively. There was an increase of 69.4% of GCs rendering genetic services from home offices. The percentage of participants who billed for telehealth services increased from 45.7% before the pandemic to 80.3% during the pandemic. The top GC perceived benefits of telehealth included safety for high‐risk COVID patients (95.2%) and saved commute time for patients (94.7%). The top GC perceived limitations of telehealth included difficulty to conduct physician evaluation/coordinating with healthcare providers (HCP) (73.7%) and difficulty addressing non‐English speaking patients (68.5%). Overall, 89.6% of GCs were satisfied with telehealth; however, 55.3% reported uncertainty whether the newly adopted SDM would continue after the pandemic subsides. Results from this study demonstrate the rapid adoption of telehealth for clinical genetic counseling services as a result of the COVID‐19 pandemic, an increase in billing for these services, and support the feasibility of telehealth for genetic counseling as a longer term solution to reach patients who are geographically distant.
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    Systematic evaluation of genome sequencing for the diagnostic assessment of autism spectrum disorder and fetal structural anomalies
    (Elsevier, 2023) Lowther, Chelsea; Valkanas, Elise; Giordano, Jessica L.; Wang, Harold Z.; Currall, Benjamin B.; O'Keefe, Kathryn; Pierce-Hoffman, Emma; Kurtas, Nehir E.; Whelan, Christopher W.; Hao, Stephanie P.; Weisburd, Ben; Jalili, Vahid; Fu, Jack; Wong, Isaac; Collins, Ryan L.; Zhao, Xuefang; Austin-Tse, Christina A.; Evangelista, Emily; Lemire, Gabrielle; Aggarwal, Vimla S.; Lucente, Diane; Gauthier, Laura D.; Tolonen, Charlotte; Sahakian, Nareh; Stevens, Christine; An, Joon-Yong; Dong, Shan; Norton, Mary E.; MacKenzie, Tippi C.; Devlin, Bernie; Gilmore, Kelly; Powell, Bradford C.; Brandt, Alicia; Vetrini, Francesco; DiVito, Michelle; Sanders, Stephan J.; MacArthur, Daniel G.; Hodge, Jennelle C.; O'Donnell-Luria, Anne; Rehm, Heidi L.; Vora, Neeta L.; Levy, Brynn; Brand, Harrison; Wapner, Ronald J.; Talkowski, Michael E.; Medical and Molecular Genetics, School of Medicine
    Short-read genome sequencing (GS) holds the promise of becoming the primary diagnostic approach for the assessment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fetal structural anomalies (FSAs). However, few studies have comprehensively evaluated its performance against current standard-of-care diagnostic tests: karyotype, chromosomal microarray (CMA), and exome sequencing (ES). To assess the clinical utility of GS, we compared its diagnostic yield against these three tests in 1,612 quartet families including an individual with ASD and in 295 prenatal families. Our GS analytic framework identified a diagnostic variant in 7.8% of ASD probands, almost 2-fold more than CMA (4.3%) and 3-fold more than ES (2.7%). However, when we systematically captured copy-number variants (CNVs) from the exome data, the diagnostic yield of ES (7.4%) was brought much closer to, but did not surpass, GS. Similarly, we estimated that GS could achieve an overall diagnostic yield of 46.1% in unselected FSAs, representing a 17.2% increased yield over karyotype, 14.1% over CMA, and 4.1% over ES with CNV calling or 36.1% increase without CNV discovery. Overall, GS provided an added diagnostic yield of 0.4% and 0.8% beyond the combination of all three standard-of-care tests in ASD and FSAs, respectively. This corresponded to nine GS unique diagnostic variants, including sequence variants in exons not captured by ES, structural variants (SVs) inaccessible to existing standard-of-care tests, and SVs where the resolution of GS changed variant classification. Overall, this large-scale evaluation demonstrated that GS significantly outperforms each individual standard-of-care test while also outperforming the combination of all three tests, thus warranting consideration as the first-tier diagnostic approach for the assessment of ASD and FSAs.