Hollywood superstar Angelia Jolie has removed her ovaries
and fallopian tubes over concern that she is developing
ovarian cancer.
This came 2 years after she had her two breasts removed to
prevent breast cancer.
The actress, who has lost her mother, grandmother and aunt
to the disease, said she had the procedure last week after
results from a blood test raised fears that she may be in the
early stages of cancer.
Although later tests showed that wasn’t the case, Jolie said
she chose to go ahead with the surgery because of her family
history and because she carries a gene mutation that had
given her a 50 percent risk of developing ovarian cancer, the
same mutation that put her at 87 percent risk of developing
breast cancer.
“I did not do this solely because I carry the BRCA1 gene
mutation, and I want other women to hear this,” Jolie wrote in
an op-ed piece in The New York Times, the same way she
announced her double mastectomy two years ago.
“A positive BRCA test does not mean a leap to surgery,” said
Jolie, who is married to fellow Hollywood heavyweight Brad
Pitt.
“In my case, the Eastern and Western doctors I met agreed
that surgery to remove my tubes and ovaries was the best
option, because on top of the BRCA gene, three women in my
family have died from cancer,” she wrote.
Her doctors said that she should have the preventive surgery
about a decade before the earliest onset of cancer in her
female relatives.
“My mother’s ovarian cancer was diagnosed when she was
49. I’m 39.”
This surgery has put Angelina Jolie into early menopause.