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Angelina decided to have the surgery for her children, after her own mother died of ovarian cancer aged 56
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The 37-year-old Hollywood actress and mother of six reveals in a New York Times op-ed article today that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carries the BRCA1 gene, which sharply increases her risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
Read her full article My Medical Choice below;
MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.
We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.
Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
