Partner 3: Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC)

Clinical Centre

As one of eight medical centres in the Netherlands, Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) employs a staff of 7,000 people working in the areas of patient care, research, education and study programmes. Patient care is highly specialised with a broad package of top-level clinical care provided, including organ transplants, cardiovascular interventions and all types of bone marrow transplants. The research conducted in the LUMC comprises both basic and clinically oriented work with a considerable portion of the research focusing on the translation from basic research to its final clinical application (“from bench to bedside” and vice versa).          

The Centre for Congenital Heart Defects Amsterdam Leiden (www.cahal.nl) incorporates the Departments of Pediatric Cardiology, Congenital Cardiology and Congenital Cardiac Surgery of medical centres in Leiden and Amsterdam, where patients with all forms of congenital heart disease are treated starting with presentation, diagnosis, surgical or interventional treatment through to their follow up. The centre is the largest facility in the Netherlands dealing with 40 % of all patients with congenital heart disease. It is one of the largest centres for congenital heart disease in Europe.Operations are performed at the LUMC, Leiden and the AMC, Amsterdam with children’s operations primarily carried out at LUMC.           

The LUMC participates as a member of the ESPOIR clinical network and will implant 25 DHV for pulmonary valve replacement within the clinical trial and procure homografts via domino transplantation. The Department of Congenital Cardiac Surgery at LUMC is specialized in adult and pediatric cardiac surgery with a particular focus on pulmonary valve replacement strategies using different biological and homograft valves. Professor Mark Hazekamp has been actively involved in research on decellularized heart valves in the recent years and therefore is excellently placed to contribute to the ESPOIR clinical network.

Contributors to ESPOIR 

Prof. Mark Hazekamp, Head of Congenital Cardiothoracic Surgery  
Dr. V. Sojak, Department of Congenital Cardiothoracic Surgery