Michael Jacobs

Professor

Prof. Michael Jacobs has obtained his medical doctor degree at the University of Limburg, Maastricht. His PhD research focussed on microcirculation in patients with peripheral arterial disease. Following his surgical residency, he was trained as a cardiovascular surgeon at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, USA. He was appointed chief of vascular surgery at the Amsterdam Medical Center in 1992 and started research programmes concentrating on assessment of spinal cord function in thoraco-abdominal aortic aneurysm (TAAA) repair and preventive strategies by means of selective organ perfusion and motor evoked potentials. In 2000, he was invited to Maastricht UMC+ to chair the Department of Surgery and create an integrated heart- and vascular center (HVC). Research addressed pre-operative imaging of the blood supplying arteries of the spinal cord in TAAA patients, and the role of arginine and nitric oxide (NO) metabolism in patients undergoing extensive aortic repair. In 2005, he also accepted the chair of Vascular Surgery at the RWTH University Hospital in Aachen, Germany.

He yearly organises the European Vascular Course, hosting around 2,000 cardiovascular specialists from all over the world.