Thanks to the international network of CAHAL*, new scientific insights are quickly implemented at the LUMC and Amsterdam UMC
Professors Mark Hazekamp and Nico Blom try to push the boundaries of pediatric cardiology every day. Thanks to the continuous improvement of quality guidelines in research, education and patient care, they contribute to improving the diagnosis and treatment of (congenital) heart defects and cardiac arrhythmias worldwide. They don’t do that alone. The specialists of the Amsterdam-Leiden Center for Congenital Heart Defects (CAHAL) are in contact with colleagues all over the world.
Both specialists feel the calling to mean something for their field. “We don’t just want to consume knowledge, we also want to do our part,” says Blom. Hazekamp nods. “We work in a relatively young and highly specialized field. Improving our field is an important part of our work. To actually advance knowledge about congenital heart defects, international cooperation is necessary,” he adds.
Optimize treatment strategies
The urgency of international knowledge sharing has to do with the rarity of (congenital) heart disorders and cardiac arrhythmias in childhood. “This involves complicated procedures that are not often performed. It is therefore very important that the results of treatments are widely shared,” says Hazekamp, who is currently also working part-time in Lille to help set up a pediatric heart surgery program there. He did this before in Hamburg. Blom: “By comparing results internationally, we know what works well and what doesn’t. With that knowledge, we can continue to optimize our treatment strategies.”
International knowledge networks
Mark Hazekamp is professor of Pediatric Heart Surgery and has been active for years, also as chairman, within the European Association for Cardio-Thoric Surgery (EACTS), the largest knowledge network within this specialty in the world. Nico Blom (Professor of Pediatric Cardiology, in particular cardiac arrhythmias in children) was appointed chair of the Association for European Pediatric and Congenital Cardiology (AEPC) earlier this year. This is a unique network that is committed to spreading knowledge about the normal and diseased heart in children worldwide.
Thanks to the international network of CAHAL*, new scientific insights are quickly implemented at the LUMC and Amsterdam UMC. “We offer state-of-the-art treatments. This means that we apply the latest scientific insights in practice,” says Hazekamp. He likes to give an example. “At CAHAL we perform a complicated double switch operation in patients with a congenital corrected transposition of the great vessels. This is a rare congenital heart defect, where the ventricle is in the wrong place,” he explains. “We learned the treatment from specialists in New York, but now doctors from all over the world come to us to learn how to perform this operation.”
Global knowledge exchange
New scientific insights are incorporated into international quality requirements and guidelines. Because both academic centers have a lot of expertise on specialist treatments for congenital heart defects and cardiac arrhythmias, CAHAL experts are often asked to contribute to these quality documents. Within the AEPC, for example, Blom co-wrote new international educational quality guidelines for pediatric cardiologists. “Last year we further standardized the training requirements,” he says. “For example, pediatric cardiologists in training now have to take a European exam. As a result, they are all trained uniformly and according to high standard requirements.”
Good reputation
Since the foundation of CAHAL in 1995, a lot of research has been carried out at the LUMC and Amsterdam UMC, with more than 1500 publications in scientific journals. In addition, more than 100 people have been promoted within CAHAL. “As a result, we have built up a good international reputation,” says Blom. “Specialists from other countries inside and outside Europe come here to gain and share knowledge. For example, some of the pediatric cardiologists in Belgium and Portugal have been trained by us.”
Conversely, CAHAL employees also gain knowledge abroad. “Recently, one of our pediatric cardiologists in training to become an interventional cardiologist went to Munich to spend a while with the specialists there,” says Blom. “He then brought back new knowledge about how they do things slightly differently there. Based on that information, we also take a critical look at how we work and where we can improve further.”
Keep improving
For many specialists there is another good reason to come to CAHAL. There is a lot to investigate here. For example, LUMC has a large anatomical collection of congenital heart defects. In addition, CAHAL has a long-lived patient population who have undergone treatment for transposition of the great vessels. This means that the two large arteries come out of the heart reversed. CAHAL also has a successful program for the treatment of the small left heart complex. Blom and Hazekamp emphasize the importance of continuing to investigate heart defects and cardiac arrhythmias and also to look at how treated patients are doing in the long term. “In this way we gain new insights and this improves the field”, both say.
*CAHAL is part of Amsterdam UMC and the Leiden University Medical Center.
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