A family medical history is a record of health conditions in your blood relatives. It does not diagnose you. It tells a clinician which conditions show up early or often in your family, so screening and questions can be more specific.
Who to include
Start with first-degree relatives: parents, siblings, and children. Add grandparents if you know the facts. For each person, record the relationship, the condition, and the age when it was found. If someone died of a known cause, record the cause and the age. “Heart problems” is weaker than “heart attack at 52.”
Conditions clinics commonly ask about
- Heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Cancer, with the type if you know it
- Asthma and other long-term lung disease
- Kidney disease
- Blood clots, bleeding problems, or known inherited conditions
How to collect it
Ask one relative who keeps the family story, then check names and ages with a second person. Skip rumors. If you do not know the age, write “age unknown” instead of guessing. Update the record when you learn a new diagnosis.
Store it next to your own allergies, operations, and medication list so you are not rebuilding it at every new clinic.
- Keep family history in the medical history tracker
- Prepare the rest of your history for an appointment