Angelina Jolie has revealed she has had a preventive double mastectomy to reduce her risk of developing breast cancer, and has gone public with the news to raise awareness.
The actor has a defective gene, BRCA1, which significantly increases her risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer, she writes in the New York Times. The latter disease killed her mother at the age of 56.
Jolie says she chose not to keep the decision private in the hope that other women would get gene-tested. "Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimise the risk," she says.
Women with a defect in BRCA1 have on average a 65% risk of developing breast cancer. Jolie says her doctors told her that her risk was 87% and that surgery had reduced it to 5%. The defect also increases the risk of ovarian cancer, which Jolie says doctors estimate is 50% for her.
The 37-year-old, who has six children – three by Brad Pitt and three adopted – finished three months of medical procedures on 27 April. She says she first had "nipple delay" to maximise the chances of saving her nipples, before breast tissue removal and, nine weeks later, reconstruction. Pitt was by her side for "every minute of the surgeries", she said.
Read more at The Guardian.
