Bart Maesen

Assistant Professor

Bart Maesen studied medicine at the University of Antwerp, Belgium and obtained a research position to conduct research on ischaemia/reperfusion injury following his graduation. Afterwards he moved to Maastricht, the Netherlands. He started his training in cardiothoracic surgery with a 4 -years fellowship at the electrophysiology lab of Prof Uli Schotten in 2006. Based on the research performed in this period, he obtained his PhD with a thesis on structure-function relationships of atrial fibrillation waves in goat and man. 

During his surgical traineeship he was trained in arrhythmia surgery by Prof. Mark La Meir. With his understanding of electrophysiology and manual skills, he was soon able to take over the hybrid AF ablation programme and together with interventional electrophysiologist Dr Justin Luermans and with the support of Prof. Harry Crijns, he developed an international highly acclaimed minimally invasive hybrid arrhythmia surgery programme at Maastricht UMC+.

Bart became staff member in 2017 and is currently head of our Arrhythmia Surgery programme. He is setting up a translational research programme with focus on improving outcome in surgical AF management by better understanding of basic mechanisms and concepts. He supervises several PhD students and helps other centers to start their own AF minimally invasive hybrid AF programme.