Source: time.com - Tuesday, March 24, 2015
In an op-ed in the New York Times , Angelina Jolie Pitt announced that she recently had surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes. The procedure put her into menopause at age 39, and she will take replacement hormones for another decade or so. “It is not easy to make these decisions,” she writes. She describes how she felt she “still [had] months to make the date” for her operation as she prepared herself both physically and emotionally to end her reproductive years. MORE: The Angelina Effect But cancer experts say that Jolie did the right thing. While her decision to remove both her breasts before she developed breast tumors was controversial, her latest choice to have her ovaries removed is less so, although equally difficult from both an emotional and physical point of view. “This surgery decision is more straightforward than the decision to have the breasts removed,” says Dr. Karen Lu, chair of gynecologic oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. “And it’s definitely a stronger recommendation than for the bilateral prophylactic mastectomy.” For women like Jolie, who harbor either of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations (Jolie is positive for BRCA1), their risk of breast cancer is anywhere from 80% to 90% higher than that of women without the genetic aberrations. But there are ways that doctors can screen for even the smallest tumors in the breast and therefore get a heads up when the cancer is growing. That allows many women to
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In an op-ed in the New York Times , Angelina Jolie Pitt announced that she recently had surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes. The procedure put her into menopause at age 39, and she will take replacement hormones for another decade or so. “It is not easy to make these decisions,” she writes. She describes how she felt she “still [had] months to make the date” for her operation as she prepared herself both physically and emotionally to end her reproductive years. MORE: The Angelina Effect But cancer experts say that Jolie did the right thing. While her decision to remove both her breasts before she developed breast tumors was controversial, her latest choice to have her ovaries removed is less so, although equally difficult from both an emotional and physical point of view. “This surgery decision is more straightforward than the decision to have the breasts removed,” says Dr. Karen Lu, chair of gynecologic oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. “And it’s definitely a stronger recommendation than for the bilateral prophylactic mastectomy.” For women like Jolie, who harbor either of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations (Jolie is positive for BRCA1), their risk of breast cancer is anywhere from 80% to 90% higher than that of women without the genetic aberrations. But there are ways that doctors can screen for even the smallest tumors in the breast and therefore get a heads up when the cancer is growing. That allows many women to
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