Press Release: Healing Hearts by Kathy E. Magliato, MD
HEALING HEARTS
A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
By KATHY E. MAGLIATO, MD
“In her amazing memoir, Magliato belies the myth of surgeons as distant, cocky, robotic—and male. Look for sobering statistics on women and heart disease, and an inspiring example of living and loving life to the fullest.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Fast-paced, smooth writing that never bores.” —Booklist.com
“Magliato is a courageous, successful doctor with admirable goals and an impressive résumé. Bold and educative.” —Kirkus Reviews
Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of a handful of female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. As a member of an even more exclusive group—she is one of the few cardiothoracic surgeons specially trained to perform heart transplants—she recounts the day when she first realized she wanted to be a heart surgeon: “when I wrapped my hand around that heart that was it for me. Love at first sight. Love at first touch. I knew this was exactly what I wanted. To touch the human heart everyday.” In her memoir, HEALING HEARTS: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon (Broadway Books; on sale: January 26, 2010; hardcover; $24.00), Kathy gives us a rare glimpse into the realities of being a cardiothoracic surgeon. Readers will be instantly pulled into her fast-paced world—struggling to fit in as a female in the biggest boys club of them all, learning operating room etiquette (e.g., the lead surgeon always stands on the patient’s right side), and skillfully juggling a full family life as the wife of a liver transplant surgeon (they have bedside tables cluttered with pagers and cell phones that ring throughout the night) and the mother of two young boys.
We come to know many of those patients whose lives Dr. Magliato has touched: a ninety-four-year-old woman with heart failure whose friends and neighbors call Grandma even though she has no children, a baby born with a hole in her heart, and a thirty-five-year-old movie producer who saves her own life by recognizing the symptoms of a heart attack. Through it all, Dr. Magliato remains professional yet compassionate, treating her patients’ hearts in both the literal and figurative senses of the word.
Going beyond the personal stories of her patients, Dr. Magliato sheds light on a medical epidemic, cardiovascular disease, which is the number one killer of women in America: 41,000,000 women are currently living with the disease; even more startling, one in every 2.4 women will die from cardiovascular illness. With these staggering statistics in mind, Dr. Magliato’s book is full of information to educate woman about heart disease, what the risk factors are, why more women than men die of the disease, and what women can do to minimize their own risk.
HEALING HEARTS is a powerful and moving memoir that demonstrates Dr. Magliato’s passion and commitment to her family, her patients, and her profession and reveals that, at the end of a long day, it’s our hearts that matter most.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
KATHY E. MAGLIATO, MD, is currently the director of women’s cardiac services at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, and an attending cardiothoracic surgeon at Torrance Memorial Medical Center in Torrance, California, where she is developing a women’s heart center to address the cardiac needs of female patients. She lives in Pacific Palisades with her husband and their two children.
HEALING HEARTS
A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
By Kathy E. Magliato, MD
Published by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
Hardcover; $24.00; 272 pages
ISBN 978-0-7679-3026-0
For more information about HEALING HEARTS or to schedule an interview with Dr. Kathy Magliato, please contact Caroline Sill at 212-782-8943 or csill@randomhouse.com.
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