Popular actress Angelina Jolie has stirred up the world of preventive surgery this week. Through a statement to The New York Times, the interpreter informed that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy (removal of both breasts) in order to reduce the risk of breast cancer, due to her family history.
The American actress was a carrier of a defective gene in her blood (BCRA1) which exponentially increases the chances of suffering from breast or ovarian cancer, and for this reason she decided to undergo this operation. According to Dr. María González Cao, oncologist and expert in breast cancer, “prophylactic or preventive mastectomies are performed when the risk of breast cancer is estimated to be very high, as in women who are carriers of defective genes such as BCRA1 and BCRA2 due to family inheritance”. However, the doctor adds, “only 5% of women who suffer from breast cancer develop it because of a family history”.
In Jolie’s case, as she herself explains in the U.S. newspaper, doctors had warned her that she had an 87% chance of contracting breast cancer and a 50% chance of ovarian cancer. In view of these estimates, Dr. González Cao recommends undergoing a mastectomy since “the risk of cancer is very high”. However, she also points out that there are other methods of prevention such as “the removal of the ovaries, constant screening through MRI scans and even the intake of certain hormonal drugs”.
After three months of surgery, as the treatment included two mastectomies and breast reconstruction, the doctors have reduced the risk of the artist suffering from these diseases by 5%. As Dr. Jaume Masià, an expert breast reconstruction surgeon, explains, “around 25% of women who have undergone a preventive mastectomy undergo breast reconstruction”. Even so, he recognizes that many patients who have had their breasts removed do not have them reconstructed due to “lack of information and resources”.
Dr. González Cao stresses the importance of undergoing a preventive mastectomy by personal decision, since “it does not depend on medical criteria”. Dr. Masià, for his part, applauds the dissemination of Angelina Jolie’s case as a way of “raising awareness of the treatment and helping people to make a risk assessment of it.”