ABC's Amy Robach reveals cancer diagnosis after having mammogram on air

Good Morning America presenter reluctantly agreed to have televised mammogram which doctors say saved her life

ABC shows co-host Amy Robach during a broadcast of "Good Morning America," in New York (AP )

ABC's Amy Robach confirmed she has been diagnosed with breast cancer on Monday, a month after undergoing an on-air mammogram for Good Morning America (GMA).

The 40-year-old news correspondent will undergo a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery this week, before learning what her treatment will then involve going forward.

Producers asked her to present the mammogram programme because, at 40, she's at the age when it's recommended that women are regularly checked for breast cancer.

Amy admitted she had been reluctant to have the public mammogram but went ahead after GMA anchor Robin Roberts told her that if the broadcast saved just one life, it would be worth it.

“It never occurred to me that life would be mine,” she said.

In the first segment of the programme, she emerged from her mammogram telling Roberts and her GMA colleagues that it hurt much less than she thought it would.

A few weeks later, she returned to view follow-up images from the mammogram and learned that she had cancer. Her husband and her parents flew in that night “and we started gearing up for a fight,” she recalled.

Writing in a blog for ABC, she said: "And while everyone who gets cancer is clearly unlucky, I got lucky by catching it early, and there are so many people to thank for making sure I did. Every producer, every person who urged me to do this, changed my trajectory.

"The doctors told me bluntly: “That mammogram just saved your life.”

“I can only hope my story will do the same and inspire every woman who hears it to get a mammogram, to take a self-exam,” she said. “No excuses. It is the difference between life and death.”