Incidental Finding of Sickle Cell Trait From an Everyday Diabetes Test: Should General Health Care Providers and testing centres report, retest, or refer?
Date
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
ISSN
1945-4953
Volume Title
Publisher
Type
Peer reviewed
Abstract
The HbA1c test is increasingly widely used as a diagnostic and screening test for diabetes mellitus type 2 (T2DM) but the presence of haemoglobin variants, such as sickle haemoglobin, can interfere with results in some analytical systems. These interferences are occasionally reported by laboratories, leading unprepared patients to suspect they may be sickle cell carriers and seek confirmation through a sickle cell test. Incidental findings of Hb variants, and the reporting thereof, present multiple ethical challenges to laboratories, medical practitioners, patients and their family members, but there appear to be no international or national guidelines on how to deal with the reporting of these findings. This paper explores issues such as whether informed consent is necessary, how the results should be communicated, how the patient may be affected by knowing their carrier status, the timing of communications, complications caused by partial results, and being a ‘healthy carrier’ at the same time as potentially experiencing symptoms.