Hollywood star and Mrs Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie has announced that she has undergone a double mastectomy, following estimates that she had a 87% risk of breast cancer. Her mother died of breast cancer in 2007, age 56.

CNN reports:

Actress Angelina Jolie announced in a New York Times op-ed article on Tuesday 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.

“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,” Jolie wrote. “Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy.”

Jolie’s mother, actress and producer Marcheline Bertrand, died of breast cancer in 2007 at the age of 56.

In the Times op-ed, titled “My Medical Choice,” Jolie said she finished three months of medical procedures on April 27 that included the mastectomies and reconstruction.

“I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made,” Jolie wrote. “My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent.

“I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer,” she said.

[more here]

Angelina also praised her husband, Brad Pitt, for his support.

From SKY News:

“I am fortunate to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who is so loving and supportive,” she writes. “So to anyone who has a wife or girlfriend going through this, know that you are a very important part of the transition.

“Brad was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center where I was treated, for every minute of the surgeries. We managed to find moments to laugh together.

“We knew this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. And it has.”

Jolie, who is one of the world’s highest paid performers, says the cost of getting tested for BRCA1 and another faulty gene, called BRCA2, is more than $3,000 (nearly £2,000) in the US and that this “remains an obstacle for many women”.

[more here]

Click here for the Cancer Association of South Africa if you would like to find out more local information about this procedure.