by Michele Catahay

Guam - More women suffer from heart disease than men. KUAM News sat down with a visiting cardiothoracic surgeon to tell us why more women are dying from a disease that can be prevented.

Director of Women's Cardiac Services at St. John's Health Center and cardiothoracic surgeon at Torrance Medical Center in California Kathy Magliato recently wrote a book entitled "Healing Hearts: A Memoir of A Female Heart Surgeon". She says the idea of operating on women who have a disease that is preventable prompted her to write this book. She says 80% of the cases can be prevented.

In fact, she says the disease kills more women than all the cancers combined, saying, "If I take all women with breast cancer, colon cancer, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer and combine them, it doesn't even come close to women dying of heart disease."

Magliato's book features stories of women with heart disease all over the nation and those who died as a result of it. "Within that story, women will learn how to prevent themselves from being a victim from this disease. That's not enough with the book, so what I did is that I took the book and morphed it into a memoir. You will read about the story of heart disease in women and you will read about my patient's stories," she explained.

Dr. Magliato happens to be one of the few female heart surgeons in the world and says this book allows her to get the message out to other women. Every year since 1984, Magliato says more women die of heart disease than men, adding, "The reason women are dying is that they don't understand heart disease well in women. They present differently. Their symptoms are different than a man's. So what happens is that women tend to get to us later, and that's why they die."

While there are risk factors such as family history and age that cannot be changed, there are others that can be prevented. You're encouraged to exercise, have a healthy diet, lose weight, keep diabetes and blood pressure under control and stop smoking. "Eating right is not a bag of chips and a beer. It means eating lean protein, eating good healthy vegetables and fruits and eating very lean carbohydrates, healthy carbohydrates like rice and some of the grains."

It's also important to recognize some symptoms to include shortness of breath and other things and all shouldn't be ignored. The physician says, "50% of women get no chest pains whatsoever. Men get typical chest pain, women don't. So the symptoms they should be concerned about that is their heart talking to them saying something is wrong include ongoing fatigue that you cannot explain, nausea, upper abdominal-type pain.

Dr. Magliato will see patients at the SDA Clinic in Tamuning up until next Monday. Also, if you want to purchase her book, you can find it on Amazon.com or KathyMagliato.com.