Angelina Jolie shared her case with the whole world to help raise awareness.
A few years ago, Angelina Jolie voluntarily underwent two large operations to reduce the chances of contracting cancer. On this occasion, we remember those events and we tell you what were the reasons that led her to make such a decision.
Angelina Jolie knows very well what are the havoc that cancer can cause. Her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, passed away in 2007 at the age of 56 after battling this disease for several seasons.
Simultaneously, it is known that her grandmother and her aunt also died from the same disease. All this added to the desire to live and to see her sons and daughters grow, leading the actress born in 1975 to make the decision to pay special attention to her health and do whatever was necessary to preserve her life.
In a text that she published years ago in The New York Times, Jon Voight's daughter reported that she is a carrier of the BRCA1 and BRAC2 genetic mutations, which increase the risk of contracting br**st and ovarian cancer. As the BBC reports, health professionals told the actress that, if she did not undergo any treatment, she had an 87% chance of suffering from br**st cancer and a 50% chance of suffering from ovarian cancer.
Angelina Jolie and her surgical interventions to prevent cancer
At the beginning of 2013, the protagonists of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Mr. and Mrs. Smith underwent a bilateral adenomastectomy, a surgery that, broadly speaking, consists of removing the mammary glands and replacing them with prostheses.
2 years later, given signs of ovarian cancer risk, Brad Pitt's ex-wife entered the operating room again, this time to undergo a hysterectomy, surgery by which they removed her ovaries and fallopian tubes. Practically parallel to the latter, the American artist and activist began a hormonal treatment to mitigate the alterations that this surgery produces, which are represented as symptoms of early menopause.
Finally, it must be said that Jolie not only made this decision to improve her life expectancy but also took it upon herself to make the entire process public to make women aware of the risk that this disease implies and to help all those who find themselves in such situations.
Even so, it is necessary to clarify that this should not generate alarm or panic. On the contrary, the best thing to do is to go to a health professional and perform the pertinent routine studies.
