Cardiovascular health in general practice

Research aim

Improve cardiovascular health of people by high-quality research aimed at early detection of cardiovascular disease, risk-stratification, risk-based treatment, and primary care innovation.

About us

The research group consists of general practitioners who part-time perform cardiovascular research in the general practice domain. Our work has helped revolutionize clinical practice on triage, early diagnosis and risk-based treatment. With publications in highly esteemed journals, including a seminar on heart failure with preserved ejection fraction in the Lancet, but also by significant contribution to(inter)national guidelines on heart failure, atrial fibrillation, acute coronary syndrome, stable angina pectoris. We build large expertise on triage of patients contacting the primary care out-of-hours setting for chest discomfort, shortness of breath or neurological deficit. Our ‘lessons learned’ will be uptake in the national Netherlands Triage Standard (NTS). We partner internationally with Oxford (Prof. Richard McManus), the European Primary Care Cardiovascular Society, and two EU consortia (RAPHAEL; palliative care in heart failure and Stratify-HF; artificial intelligence for diagnosing and risk-stratifying heart failure), and involvement in working groups of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology, e.g. workgroup on heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, and on maintaining the website ‘heartfailurematters.org’. Nationally we work together with other academic general practice researchers, the DCVA, the Dutch Heart Foundation, Research Consortium General practice, and with one of the themes of the UMC Utrecht; Circulatory Health.