Is mastectomy answer?
U.S. actress Angelina Jolie, fourth from left, arrives with her children, from left, Maddox, Zahara, Pax Thien and Shiloh, at New Tokyo International Airport in Narita, east of Tokyo, in this July 26, 2010 file photo.Oscar-winning actress Jolie said on Tuesday that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy after finding out she had a gene mutation that leads to a sharply higher risk of both breast and ovarian cancer./ Reuters-YonhapBy Yoon Ja-youngMany people seemed shocked when actress Angelina Jolie revealed that she had a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer. The actress wrote in The New York Times earlier this week that she opted for it after finding out that she had an 87 percent chance of breast cancer as she carries a mutation in a gene called BRCA1. What if we turn out to have the mutation? Should we follow her path? Preventive mastectomy is one of the options for people with this mutation, but it isn’t the only answer, according to doctors. They stress that it is more crucial for women, especially those with family histories of breast cancer, to
May 17, 2013By Yoon Ja-young