H. J.g.m. Crijns

Harry Crijns is professor and chair of Cardiology and board member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM) at Maastricht UMC+. He studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam and was trained in cardiology and electrophysiology in Groningen and Maastricht. He is a Fellow of the ESC and a past board member of the EHRA. He is also past Chair of the Netherlands Society of Cardiology. He served on several guidelines committees for the management of AF. Currently, he is the chairman of the scientific advisory board of the Dutch Heart Foundation.

His primary research focus continues to be atrial fibrillation (AF). He founded the RACE trials in the Netherlands and led the Euro Heart Survey on AF (ESC). He has established his reputation by introducing innovative concepts for diagnosis and treatment of AF by showing that - quite contrary to longstanding beliefs - electrical management does not change the prognosis. This revolutionized the management of arrhythmia worldwide with the effect that major interventions like electrical cardioversion, catheter ablation, and antiarrhythmic drug therapy are applied in a much more personalized fashion. He made many contributions to the field of stroke management in AF, such as the construction of well-recognized AF-specific risk stratification scores for AF progression (HATCH), ischemic stroke (CHA2DS2-Vasc), and major bleeding (HAS-BLED). These scores have practically conquered the medical AF community and improved patient care whilst boosting new clinical research throughout the world. His research now focuses on recent-onset AF, hybrid AF ablation, upstream therapy, and vascular mechanisms for AF progression and stroke in idiopathic atrial fibrillation.