Thoracic Surgeon Kathryn Engelhardt MD MS Joins MUSC

Kathryn Engelhardt, M.D., MS, joins the Department of Surgery as an Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery with clinical interests in thoracic malignancies and lung transplant. Dr. Engelhardt completed her surgical residency at MUSC in 2020. After finishing general surgery training, she traveled to Washington University in St Louis, where she spent two years in advanced training to specialize in cardiothoracic surgery. She now brings her expertise in tracheal surgery and airway disease, benign thoracic and esophageal disease, and minimally invasive surgery and lung transplantation back to the low country to serve the people of South Carolina and the surrounding communities. 

 

“Kate was an outstanding resident in general surgery at MUSC. I am ecstatic that she is joining us now, after her training in Thoracic surgery at Washington University in St. Louis,” said Marc R. Katz, M.D, MPH, chief of the division of cardiothoracic surgery. “I am confident that she will have a great impact on MUSC and the field of thoracic surgery overall.”

 

Dr. Engelhardt has significant research interests in shared decision making (SDM.) She received a Master of Science Degree in Health Services and Outcomes Research at Northwestern University, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Northwestern Institute for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Her long-term goal is to provide a generalizable SDM tool that can be applied to surgical decision-making scenarios to ultimately improve the delivery of appropriate care that is concordant both with the clinical indication and with the patient values.

 

Dr. Engelhardt has earned numerous awards, including the Curtis P. Artz MUSC Surgical Society Award for Excellence, the MUSC Yarbrough Award for Excellence in Resident Research, the Southeastern Surgical Congress Gold Medal Forum, American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress Excellence in Research, and she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Society.