Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.
The actress made the announcement on Tuesday saying she made the decision to remove her reproductive organs for fear of getting cancer.
Jolie had a double mastectomy two years ago where she had both of her breasts removed after doctors told her that she had very high chances of getting cancer.
The actress, who has lost her mother, grandmother and aunt to cancer, made the announcement in the New York Times.
The Hollywood superstar carries a gene mutation that had given her an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of developing ovarian cancer.
Angelina Jolie has revealed that she underwent preventative surgery to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed last week after tests found inflammatory markers that could be an indication of cancer.
Jolie, who had a preventive double mastectomy in 2013 when genetic tests showed an 87 percent risk of breast cancer, wrote in a New York Times that the also had a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.
As a result, the 39-year-old filmmaker, actress, UN envoy and mother of six had been planning to undergo the procedure for some time.
“It is a less complex surgery than the mastectomy, but its effects are more severe. It puts a woman into forced menopause,” Jolie wrote.
“So I was readying myself physically and emotionally, discussing options with doctors, researching alternative medicine, and mapping my hormones for estrogen or progesterone replacement. But I felt I still had months to make the date.”
When she learned two weeks ago that tests revealed higher inflammation levels, Jolie and her doctors decided it was time. Her husband, actor Brad Pitt, who was in France at the time, flew to be with her during the procedure, a laparoscopic bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.
