Page 195 - Simplicity is Key in CRT

Curriculum Vitae
Twan (Antonius) Martinus Wilhelmus van Stipdonk was born August 17th 1983 in Nuenen, the Netherlands. After attending high school at the Lorentz-Casimir Lyceum in Eindhoven in 2002 he started his medical training at the Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences at the Maastricht University (UM). His interest in Cardiology developed during the 3rd year of medical training. This resulted in assisting in research with emeritus professor in transmural cardiology Ton Gorgels and dr. Miguel Lemmert. Following internships in cardiology were all attended at the Cardiology department of the Maastricht University Medical Centre (MUMC+). After obtaining his Medical Degree in July 2008, he was able to start as a physician at the same MUMC+ Cardiology department. After a short period of clinical work, an opportunity to join the PAAHR-project (Psychische en Arbeidsgerelateerde Aspecten van HartRevalidatie); a revision of the outdated Dutch cardiac rehabilitation guideline presented. Working together with dr. Petra Kuijpers (Cardiology Department, MUMC+) and professor Angelique de Rijk (Social Medicine Department, UM) he gave rise to the 2011 NVVC guideline of cardiac rehabilitation. During these 2 years, for 1 day a week, he remained doing clinical work at the Cardiology department in the MUMC+. After finishing this project in 2011 he resumed his clinical Cardiology training. After his 4th year of training, at the Zuyderland Medical Centre, Heerlen, mainly focussing on invasive procedural training, he became interested in the field of cardiac devices. Upon arriving back at the MUMC for his 5th year of cardiology training in 2015, this was noticed by current co-promotor, dr. Kevin Vernooy. He was offered the opportunity to put his cardiology training on hold for 2 years to start up research, mainly focussing on health care process management and development, with the CRT care pathway-project presented in this thesis. During this period a care pathway for CRT patient was developed and introduced into the MUMC with success. The intensive collaboration with heart failure cardiologists in this project attenuated his interest for devices to the overall (electrical) management of heart failure patients. Furthermore, during the research period he started a collaboration with the University Medical Centres of Utrecht and Groningen on a joint CRT patient database, leading to many of the papers presented in this thesis. Since the start of his PhD-track, he has presented his work at many national and international congresses, leading to the first prize in the EHRA young investigator award in 2017. After 2 years of dedicated research he went back to his clinical training keeping his focus on CRT and general heart failure management, getting his EHRA pacing and ICD certificate at the 2018 EHRA congress. Eventually he finalized his training in Cardiology Oktober 17th 2018. Currently he is working as a fellow in Electrical Management of Heart Failure in the MUMC+.
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