When it comes to breast cancer, the figures don’t look good at all. Practically, the disease is the top cause of cancer death among women worldwide with an estimated 465,000 death annually. In the US each year, more than 180,000 new breast cancer cases are diagnosed and more than 40,000 women die because of it.

Given the circumstances, it is no wonder that Christina Applegate made such a radical decision. The popular actress had a prophylactic mastectomy or a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer in its incipient stage. She could have healed, but being a carrier of BRCA 1 gene mutation, cancer could have returned and could have been more dangerous.

Over a lifetime, BRCA 1 can increase the risk of breast cancer by as much as 85 percent and the risk of ovarian cancer by as much as 40 percent. The gene is usually inherited, which happened in Applegate’s case too. Her mother Nancy Priddy survived breast cancer twice.

It isn’t an easy decision, she admitted on Tuesday during an interview with ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” but it was the best in her case. She just wanted to be “clear” and “clean,” even with the price of not having her breasts anymore.

This is not a unique decision if considering a report of the International Journal of Cancer, which revealed that 18 percent of women with the BRCA1 gene mutation were in Applegate’s shoes. In fact, “we’re seeing probably six or seven times more prophylactic mastectomies now than 10 years ago,” Dr. Rache Simmons of the Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center in Manhattan.

“Bilateral mastectomies definitely have been rising. I have a lot of patients diagnosed in their 20s and 30s, and a lot of these women do choose to have a prophylactic mastectomy,” Dr. Sharon Rosenbaum Smith, a breast surgeon at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan said.

Although losing both breasts, they still have the chance of feeling “women” again due to the possibility of having reconstructive surgery in which doctors are taking skin from the stomach, buttock or back and reconstruct the chest area over a saline implant. Applegate makes no exception, as she will have her breasts reconstructed over the following eight months. They will be long, but worthy, the actress believes now that she eliminated any fear related to cancer recurrence.