Angelina’s Breast Cancer Victory Isn’t For Celebrities Only

This Feb. 26, 2012 file photo shows actress Angelina Jolie at the 84th Academy Awards in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Jolie says that she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer. She wrote that between early February and late April she completed three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts. AP Photo/Chris Pizzello

Actress Angelina Jolie recently announced that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning that she was genetically predisposed to cancer. Her disclosure was a powerful show of solidarity with the more than 100,000 American women who undergo breast removal surgery each year.

But Jolie’s story, while inspirational, is different from most women’s. She benefited from a relatively uncommon nipple-sparing mastectomy (NSM), a procedure that removes the breast tissue while preserving the breast skin and nipple. With NSM, after reconstructive surgery, breasts are left looking mostly unchanged.