Angelina Jolie had a preventative double mastectomy, meaning she chose to have both her breasts removed even though she had not been diagnosed with cancer.


A Canadian breast cancer specialist wants people to learn from actress Angelina Jolie's experience and seek genetic testing.

Jolie wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times Tuesday called 'My Medical Choice' about her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy after her mother died of cancer at age 56 and tests for the 'faulty' BRCA 1 mutation revealed she had a high likelihood of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

Below we answer some questions about the procedure:

Is the testing covered in Canada?
Provincial health plans cover the cost of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation testing in patients that meet criteria, such as a diagnosis of breast or ovarian cancer in a family history.

'Only 10 per cent of the women with a mutation have been identified, so if we can use this to increase the number to 20 or 25 per cent I think that would be an opportunity,' said Dr. Steven Narod, director of the Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit at Women's College Research Institute in Toronto.

The main factors that keep women from getting the blood test for the mutation are that they don't know that tests are available and doctors don't regularly ask about family medical hist.