Internships Heart and Lung Division
View the internship opportunities of the Heart & Lung (DH&L) division. You can find more information about education and internships at our departments at the website of the Heart and Vascular CenterYou can find our contact details at the bottom of this page.
Psychosocial health of patients before and after lung transplantation
Subject
A successful lung transplant prolongs the life of a patient with end-stage lung disease and contributes to their quality of life. Literature shows that psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and other distress can have a negative impact on the outcome. Improving psychological care could lead to improved survival and quality of life in these patients. For this reason, it is important to investigate the psychosocial health of patients before and after lung transplantation.
Goal
The aim of the study is to identify the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress in patients before and after lung transplantation, and their association with other variables such as medication adherence, somatic factors, and survival.
You will work together with a PhD student and independently set up the research at the AZN similar to the setup at the UMCU.
Method
A longitudinal study is conducted using questionnaires. These are processed in a database using SPSS and statistically analyzed. There is an opportunity to contribute to an article about the results.
It is also possible to shadow at the lung transplant outpatient clinic.
When
Six-month internship starting September 2018
The research
A cross-sectional study has already been completed. We are currently conducting a longitudinal study and are looking for an enthusiastic student who could set up our longitudinal research into mental health within the lung transplant team at the St. Antonius Hospital location.
Combination research/clinical
It is possible to shadow at the lung transplant outpatient clinic. You will also be part of the psychosocial multidisciplinary team, which meets monthly.
Contact
Renske Schappin, postdoctoral researcher and epidemiologist
088 75 541 12 or 63688
Marion Wessels, Lung Transplant Nurse Specialist and PhD student.
088 75 59 969 or 73926
Psychosocial health of partners/loved ones of patients before and after lung transplantation
Subject
A successful lung transplant prolongs the life of a patient with end-stage lung disease and contributes to their quality of life. Literature shows that a lung transplant is a stressful period not only for the patients themselves, but also for partners and loved ones of patients undergoing the lung transplant process, who experience psychological problems. A healthy social network is important and is associated with medication adherence and the number of readmissions after transplantation. For this reason, it is important to investigate the psychosocial health of partners and loved ones of patients before and after lung transplantation and its relationship with other variables. This is an important starting point for developing interventions.
Goal
- The goal is the prevalence of psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress.
- Investigate the relationship with other variables such as medication adherence, somatic factors, and survival.
Method
A cross-sectional and longitudinal study is conducted using questionnaires. These are processed in a database using SPSS and statistically analyzed. There is an opportunity to contribute to an article about the results.
It is also possible to shadow at the lung transplant outpatient clinic.
When
Six-month internship starting September 2018
The research
In this study, the psychosocial health of partners/relatives of log transplant patients will be investigated using questionnaires and/or interviews. You will start with a literature review, after which we will set up a cross-sectional and longitudinal study at the UMCU.
Combination research/clinical
It is possible to shadow at the lung transplant outpatient clinic. You will also be part of the psychosocial multidisciplinary team, which meets monthly.
Contact
Renske Schappin, postdoctoral researcher and epidemiologist
088 75 541 12 or 63688
Marion Wessels, Lung Transplant Nurse Specialist and PhD student.
088 75 59 969 or 73926
Postoperative myocardial damage after non-cardiological surgeries
Subject
Postoperative myocardial damage occurs in approximately 15-20% of patients over the age of 60 undergoing major non-cardiological surgery. This postoperative myocardial damage is measured by a troponin assay and is associated with increased mortality. However, the underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood.
Goal
The aim of this study is to determine the etiology of postoperative myocardial injury in elderly patients undergoing major, non-cardiological surgery. Additionally, we investigate the prognosis of patients with postoperative myocardial injury.
Methods
This is a clinical study in which we perform a CT scan of the heart and lungs on 360 postoperative patients (180 patients with myocardial damage and 180 patients without) in the first few days after their surgery. In this way, we can investigate both the relationship between postoperative myocardial damage and pulmonary embolisms, as well as the relationship between myocardial damage and significant coronary artery disease. The patients are followed up to one year after the operation to detect any (cardiovascular) events in the year following the operation.
In addition, a retrospective database is available containing approximately 200 patients who have undergone esophageal resection in the past 5 years. This database will be used for a retrospective study into the relationship between postoperative myocardial damage and a complicated course in patients following esophageal resection.
When
Available from September 2017, internship duration 6-12 months.
Student activities
The student will be involved in, among other things, patient inclusion. In doing so, he/she informs patients about the study and asks for their consent to participate. The student collects all relevant patient information and requests the necessary examinations, including an ECG and a CT scan of the heart and lungs. In addition, the student will regularly consult with various specialists, such as the anesthesiologist involved in the care of patients with postoperative myocardial damage, the radiologist responsible for assessing the CT scan, and the cardiologist and ward physician who are contacted for potential treatment of abnormalities found on the CT scan. Furthermore, the student performs clinical follow-up for the included patients via telephone contact 2 months and 1 year after the operation.
In addition to the work for this clinical study, the student will be assigned their own subproject. This involves a retrospective cohort of approximately 200 patients who underwent esophagectomy in the past 5 years. The student will use this cohort to investigate the relationship between postoperative myocardial damage and a complicated course in patients following esophagectomy.
Contact
Laura Willemsen, physician-researcher Julius Center.
CardioTargetIdentifier
Subject
Developing a cloud-based tool for the integration and analysis of various GWAS QTL datasets and filtering based on user-defined targets.
Goal
Improving and accelerating the identification of significant QTLs from GWAS (genome-wide associated studies) based on specific targets for follow-up research in the field of cardiology.
Methods
Software development:
- collecting requirements, demands, and wishes
- Analysis and Design
- realization
- tests
Technologies: Python, PHP, HTML, JavaScript
When
September 4 to February 2 (week 36 through week 5)
There is an onboarding period starting August 14 (week 33).
The research
Datasets from various genome studies, consisting of expression data (mQTL, eQTL, pQTL), highlight diverse aspects of gene expression. In the field of cardiovascular diseases, this data is important for, among other things, the annotation of sequencing data from laboratory research.
The analysis of these datasets consists of multiple steps and has so far been a manual and time-consuming process. Therefore, these steps will be automated in an application. Various datasets are being integrated together; to this end, they are being converted to a uniform format.
Subsequently, these datasets are filtered for significantly expressed QTLs. As a final step, these QTLs will be ranked for user-defined targets, e.g., SNPs and antibodies. This guarantees the usability of these loci for follow-up research in the lab.
The application will be remotely accessible as a user-friendly web application.
Contact
Dr. Sander van der Laan
Loss-of-function variants on plaque characteristics
Topic
Assess the impact of loss-of-function variants on atherosclerotic plaque characteristics and secondary clinical outcome.
Introduction
Recently the Human Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAc) inventoried and identified the existence of loss-of-function (LoF) variants in the human genome1. ExAC discovered that each individual on average carries ~20 genes that are completely knocked-out, and heterozygous for up to ~60 genes1. They also noted that some genes are completely devoid of LoF variants, suggesting that such genes are evolutionarily and developmentally crucial to sustain life. This bears relevance to the discovery and interpretation disease susceptibility loci. This project aims to investigate to what extent LoF variants impact atherosclerotic plaque composition, aneurysmal wall characteristics, and (monocyte) gene expression, and thereby disease risk.
Objective
This project aims to investigate to what extent LoF variants impact atherosclerotic plaque composition, aneurysmal wall characteristics, and (monocyte) gene expression, and thereby disease risk.
Duration
6-9 months
Requirements
Experience and/or knowledge of UNIX and/or macOS based operating systems, UNIX-based job-submission systems, and with R, Perl and/or Python is strongly advised.
Methods
We developed an in-house pipeline to assess the presence of LoF variants in a GWAS dataset. We will apply this pipeline on data from the At2600hero-Express Biobank Study (AE) which comprises n~3,500 patients undergoing carotid or femoral endarterectomy (CEA or FEA, respectively)2. In addition, we will apply this pipeline on data from the Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Express Biobank Study (AAA, n = 776), and CTMM Circulating Cells (CTMM, n = 700). We genotyped a subset of n ~ 2,658 patients using commercially available genotyping platforms3. Whole-genome expression data is available from monocytes from CTMM. We also scanned ~35,000 histological slides of atherosclerotic and aneurysmal tissues at a high-resolution from the AE and the AAA. We will apply another in-house developed pipeline (slideToolkit, https://github.com/swvanderlaan/slideToolkit) to these high-resolution images to analyze histological markers4,5. For the purpose of this project we will associate LoF variants as determined by our pipeline to computer-analyzed histological characteristics from the AE and AAA, and gene expression in CTMM. Follow-up in silico analyzes include eQTL, mQTL, and network analyzes on in-house and public datasets of significantly associated LoF target genes. Furthermore the association to secondary clinical outcome will be investigated.
Contact
Dr. Sander van der Laan
Who are you?
Do you feel that your anatomical knowledge could use some deepening? For example, do you have surgical ambitions, or do you believe that every doctor should have a solid anatomical foundation, and would you also like to gain experience in conducting literature research? Then this is the elective internship for you!
Contact
Are you interested in a Chest-Abdomen-Pelvic elective? Then email:
Dr. Matty Spinder, physician-anatomist
What are you going to do?
Over a period of 6 weeks, you will have a unique opportunity to dissect the entire thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic region of a cadaver together with fellow students in small groups (2-4 students). It is an intensive course allowing for significant interaction between students and supervisors, resulting in a typically very steep learning curve.
The main learning objectives are: independently preparing and performing the dissection, collaborating with your colleagues, and monitoring your own learning process. In addition to dissecting, you will independently conduct in-depth literature research within an anatomical and/or embryological topic of your choice.
QUALITY study
Quantiferon-plus in Active and Latent Infection with Tuberculous mycobacteria
Tuberculosis still occurs regularly in the Netherlands. Differentiating between active tuberculosis and a latent infection is often difficult, but has major clinical consequences. There are no biomarkers that can make that distinction.
Specialties
- Lung diseases and Tuberculosis
- Translational Immunology Laboratory
Goal of the internship
- Investigate whether Quantiferon-Plus (2015) can differentiate between latent and active tuberculosis infection
- Identifying potential cytokines that can differentiate between active and latent tuberculosis infection
When
For 6 months in 2016.
We offer
A varied and educational science internship in an inspiring environment. Your internship consists of laboratory experiments, blood draws at patients' homes, and a literature review.
Who are we looking for
Are you an enthusiastic SUMMA or medical student? Do you have a special interest in infectious diseases/pulmonary diseases and immunology? Contact us!
Contact
Stefan Nierkens, Head Utrecht Center for Diagnostic Advances in Immunology Research
Regina Hofland, Pulmonary Diseases Resident, PhD student
Contact with the DH&L departments
Department of Medical Physiology
Internship coordinator: Dr. Marcel van der Heyden
m.a.g.vanderheyden@umcutrecht.nl
Department of Experimental Cardiology
Internship coordinator: Dr. Pieter Vader
Cardiology Department
Secretariat
onderwijs-cardio@umcutrecht.nl
Department of Pulmonary Diseases
Secretariat
secretariaatlongziekten@umcutrecht.nl
Department of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery
Secretariat
Thank you for your response!