Counselling and emotional support

Parents should be advised as to the availability and success of prenatal diagnosis and offered a referral for genetic counselling.

Some important facts are:

• parents with an affected child need to be informed that there is a 25% risk of having another child with cystic fibrosis
• an unaffected child has a 66% chance of being a carrier of cystic fibrosis
• a child of an unaffected sibling has about a 1 in 80 chance of being affected by cystic fibrosis, assuming that the other parent has a population 1 in 20 chance of being a carrier for CF
• an offspring of an affected mother has a 1 in 40 chance of being affected by cystic fibrosis, assuming that the father has 1 in 20 chance of being a carrier
• adult males with cystic fibrosis are normally sterile
• adult females with cystic fibrosis are subfertile