[Genetic counseling: evaluation of 1000 records]

1000 cases of genetic counseling have been reviewed. Most patients are sent to the genetic center by gynecologists (68.4%), mostly because of a personal or previous familial history (64%). This previous history concerns mainly congenital malformations (44%, 283/640) and mental retardation (24%, 154/640). Generally, the patients consult outside a pregnancy, nevertheless one fourth comes after conception and this occurs more often when the proband is a family member (38% versus 19% when the proband is a spouse and 20% when the proband is a child). Ten percent of the patients knowing they could be at risk because spouse or child is affected consult after having already had a child or having had another child. The mode of inheritance of the diseases for which patients with previous family history consult is as follows: mendelian inheritance (36%), multifactorial inheritance (19%), chromosomal defect (18%), non genetic (5%), variable inheritance (2%), unknown (15%) and insufficient information (5%). The majority of patients coming for previous familial history could be tranquilized, the recurrence risk was either small or minimal. In 2.6% of the cases, a high recurrence risk has been given and the risk could not be evaluated in 7% of the cases. The importance of genetic counseling is stressed by the fact that antenatal diagnosis could be proposed to half of the patients with a recurrence risk equal or higher than 1%.