Prof. dr. Harry Crijns head cardiologist Basic research makes it possible for us to develop new techniques for treating cardiac arrhythmia. The range of different treatments is becoming broader all the time, and increasingly tailored to the needs of every individual patient, no matter how complex his or her cardiac arrhythmia is. For example, at Maastricht UMC+ we have a special robot that performs cardiac catherization procedures, and we use innovative techniques during surgery that allow us to track down precisely where the short circuit in the heart has occurred, in real time. That involves taking 150,000 readings per second. We study and refine the effectiveness and efficiency of such techniques before other hospitals start using them. That is our task as a university medical centre. We also invented hybrid ablation, a procedure carried out simultaneously by a cardiologist and a surgeon on patients with complex cardiac arrhythmia. There are now international guidelines for this procedure and we’re teaching specialists worldwide how to go about it. We share our knowledge with others for example by operating an internationally renowned training programme for experienced cardiologists who are keen to head their own department. There have also been enormous advances in diagnostics. For example, we can implant a small device, the size of a grain of rice, under the skin to monitor the patient’s heart rhythm constantly. And we’ve established spin-off companies in Maastricht that turn our knowledge of cardiac arrhythmia into practical tools. For example, having a patient simply hold a ‘stick’ allows us to establish the presence of arrhythmia. Another business is able to determine the severity of arrhythmia based on an advanced ECG technology. So the knowledge that we’re acquiring is being transformed into something of value for society as a whole and for patients as individuals. On the job
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