Angelina Jolie has double mastectomy

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has undergone a double mastectomy to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer.

The 37-year-old mother of six has explained her reasons for having the surgery in the New York Times.

She said her doctors estimated she had an 87 per cent risk of breast cancer and a 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer. “I decided to be proactive and to minimise the risk as much I could,” she wrote.

She said the process began in February and was completed by the end of April.

BBC reports that in an article entitled “My Medical Choice,” Ms Jolie explained that her mother fought cancer for nearly a decade and died at the age of 56.

She said she had sought to reassure her children that the same illness would not take her away from them, “but the truth is I carry a ‘faulty’ gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.”

She said that once she “knew that this was my reality”, she had taken the decision to undergo the nine weeks of complex surgery required to have a double mastectomy.

Her chances of developing breast cancer have now dropped from 87 per cent to under five per cent, she said.