With our current level of understanding and preventive treatments, susceptibility testing helps you to increase the chance of detecting a precancerous or cancerous lesion early, but it does not help you make decisions about your lifestyle or your medical care that will prevent cancer. Why? On a practical level, people at lo risk will want to employ the available preventive measures (sue as diet, weight control, sun avoidance) to decrease their risk further, just as people at high risk will want to decrease their risk with preventive measures.
Studies are under way with treatments whose risk-benefit balance will very likely make them valuable only for patients at high risk. When these treatments become available, susceptibility testing will take on greater practical importance for your efforts t prevent cancer. This will be true for treatments that
• work only if you are at high risk
• are too risky to justify using if you are at normal risk
• are too toxic to justify using if you are at normal risk
• are too expensive to justify using if you are at normal risk
*48/32/5*
