| Name: |
M.A. (Maaike) Sikma, MD |
| Function: |
Staff Intensive Care and Clinical Toxicologist |
| Department: |
Intensive Care Medicine and National Poisons Information Center |
| Division: |
Division of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care, Clinical Toxicology and Emergency Medicine |
| E-mail address: |
M.A.Sikma@umcutrecht.nl |
| Phone number: |
+31 (0) 88 75 61137 |
| Fax number: |
+31 (0) 88 75 61233 |
| Visiting address: |
UMC Utrecht
Heidelberglaan 100
3584 CX Utrecht
The Netherlands |
| Correspondence: |
UMC Utrecht
P.O. Box 85500
Mail stop F06.149
3508 GA Utrecht
The Netherlands |
About Maaike Sikma studied Medical Sciences at the University of Groningen from 1992 to 1997. From 1997 to 2005 she studied Internal Medicine at the University hospital of Groningen. She finished her study at the University Medical Center of Utrecht in 2007 as Internal and Intensive Care doctor. Afterwards she stayed in Utrecht where she is currently working as an intensivist at the Department of Intensive Care Center. Additionally, she works for the National Poisons Information Centre since 2007, where she became enthusiastic for toxicokinetics, and subsequently for pharmacokinetics in critically ill patients.
Interest and focus The clinical focus of Maaike Sikma is pharmacokinetics in the Intensive Care and Clinical Toxicology. Further, her clinical interest is in acute renal failure and organ donation. She is responsible for training residents and fellows in these topics. Maaike is supervisor organ and tissue donation in the district of Utrecht and a member of the advisory board organ donation for the Ministry of Health.
Her research focus is on pharmaco/toxicokinetics of the critically ill. Her goal is to increase safe medicine use on the Intensive Care and thus patient safety. Intensive Care patients are more at risk to develop a medicine intoxication while treated, because these patients have regularly organ failure of organs important for the metabolism and clearance of drugs. Moreover, Intensive Care patients are treated with several pharmaceuticals at the same time; therefore they have higher risk to develop drug interaction and toxicity.
At the moment, in cooperation with Prof. Jan Meulenbelt and Prof. Jozef Kesecioglu, she is studying pharmacokinetics of tacrolimus, which is an immunodepressant used in heart and lung transplantation patients (The Spartacus trial). Shortly after transplantation, tacrolimus causes often nephrotoxicity. When the pharmacokinetics of tacrolimus shortly after transplantation are better understood, morbidity and mortality of transplantation patients can be reduced. Thus this knowledge will increase the safe use of tacrolimus in recent transplanted patients.