Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie announced on Tuesday that she had a preventative mastectomy after learning she had a gene that significantly raised her risk of breast cancer. Here's a crash course in the procedure Jolie had and why.
Q: What kind of surgery did Jolie have?
A: Jolie had a preventative double mastectomy, meaning she chose to have both her breasts removed even though she had not been diagnosed with cancer.
Q: Why did she have the mastectomies?
A: Jolie says that she has a 'faulty' version of the BRCA1 gene that means she had an 87 percent chance of getting breast cancer. By having both breasts removed preventatively, she said her breast cancer risk drops to below 5 percent.
Q: What did the procedure involve?
A: In double mastectomies, surgeons typically remove as much breast tissue as possible. In Jolie's case, because she was having a reconstruction done shortly afterward, the doctors preserved the skin covering her breasts, inserting 'fillers' where the breast tissue would have been, to keep the skin elastic. According to Jolie, she had implants put in nine weeks later.
Q: How many women have this faulty gene?
A: Only a small percentage of women have this same faulty gene, or a similar mutated version of a related gene, BRCA2. These mutations are most commonly found in women of Eastern European Jewish descent; one study found 2.3 percent of women in that group had the mut.