This service was first established in 1982 as one of three sub-regional centres in the Trent region (overall population size 5 million).
The Leicester Genetics Service covers a population size of approximately 1.2 million and there are close historical links with Nottingham and Sheffield. The service is based at the Leicester Royal Infirmary site in a self-contained unit with clinical offices, outpatient facilities and integrated Cytogenetics laboratory. It offers clinics across UHL locations and at Coalville Community Hospital. The new Clinical genetics outpatient department, located in the Victoria building at Leicester Royal Infirmary, has six clinics/consultation rooms and a separate waiting area. This creates a comfortable environment for the families and makes it easier for patients to access the outpatient department. It also allows parallel consultant, registrar and genetic counsellor clinics.
We offer genetic counselling, diagnostic and predictive genetic testing, screening advice and information on risk factor avoidance.
There have been historic links with both paediatric and women’s services and there is an active and growing fetal medicine unit within UHL. There are regular multi disciplinary meetings between genetics, fetal medicine, neonatal and paediatric surgery teams called ‘Antenatally Detected Anomaly meetings (ADAM).
This is an active and dynamic department with good records on patient satisfaction studies. It is responsive to community needs and provides a service to a multi-ethnic community with multi-lingual clinicians/Genetic Counsellors. In addition, the Service is co-located with the Cytogenetics laboratory, allowing for close liaison in terms of discussion of cytogenetic results and molecular cytogenetic testing. Molecular testing for Leicester patients is provided by the Nottingham City Hospital Molecular Genetics laboratory (East Midlands Genetics laboratory).
Over and above the routine outpatient clinic service we also provide following specialist/ MDT/MDC services
- Joint Genetics and Cardiology meetings
- Joint Genetics and Ophthalmology Clinics
- Joint Genetics and Neurology clinics
- Skeletal Dysplasia clinics
- Urgent prenatal genetics clinics
- Urgent ward referrals across all UHL sites
- Urgent Home visits
- Antenatally Detected Anomaly Meeting (A joint MDT between Obstetricians, Neonatologists, Geneticists, Radiologists and Neonatal surgeons).
- Fetal Diagnostic Group Meeting
- Joint genetics and dermatology clinic
- Joint genetics and hepatology clinic
- Von Hippel Lindau clinic
- Joint genetics and endocrinology clinic
- Cowden syndrome clinic.
- Prophylactic surgical decision support service.
- Predictive and diagnostic genetic testing.
- Inherited breast and bowel cancer susceptibility clinics.
- Specialist advice on cancer prevention strategies, including aspirin, tamoxifen, curcumin, diet and surgical procedures.
