Legal Aspects of Bilateral Mastectomies for Patients With or Without Mutated Genes

Since Angelina Jolie broke the news of her bilateral mastectomy and oophorectomy, most breast surgeons have regularly been facing the question of this type of surgery whatever the age of the patient.1 Familial breast cancers have received a lot of media coverage. They are often aggressive with bad prognosis, and the discovery of predisposing genes, such as mutated BRCA1 and BRCA2, has opened a window of hope. For the first time it was possible to prevent cancer by the identification of the gene and removal of the targeted organ