Hein J. J. Wellens, M.D., (b. 1935) is a Dutch cardiologist who is considered one of the founding fathers of the cardiology subspecialty known as clinical cardiac electrophysiology. Clinical cardiac electrophysiology enables patients with cardiac arrhythmmias to be subjected to catheter electrode mapping and stimulation studies. Paul Puech, first in Mexico and later in France; Benjamin Scherlag and Onkar Narula in the USA; and Dirk Durrer and Philippe Coumel in Europe were the field's pioneers in the 1950s and 1960s. The field's second wave of innovators utilized these techniques to unravel the mechanisms of tachycardia in man and set the bases for their treatment. Among them, Hein Wellens in Europe and Kenneth Rosen, John Gallagher, and Mark Josephson in the USA had the grestest impact as researchers and teachers. Josephson is the author of the first and most successful textbook of clinical cardiac electrophysiology, now in its 4th edition.

Wellens, known among European cardiologists as "the giant of Maastricht", has for many years been associated with the University of Limburg School of Medicine in Maastricht, Netherlands. At his Department of Cardiology many future clinical cardiac electrophysiologists trained from 1976 until his retirement in 2002.

Career

As a pupil and collaborator of the late Professor Dirk Durrer in Amsterdam, Dr. Wellens was involved in the early developments in programmed electrical stimulation of the heart in patients with the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome

Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome

Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome is a disorder of the heart in which the ventricles of the heart contract prematurely due to an accessory pathway known as the bundle of Kent. This accessory pathway is an abnormal electrical communication from the atria to the ventricles...

. In these patients, it was shown for the very first time that cardiac arrhythmias could be initiated and terminated by critically timed premature beats. In 1971 he reported on the use of programmed electrical stimulation of the heart in patients with atrial flutter

Atrial flutter

Atrial flutter is an abnormal heart rhythm that occurs in the atria of the heart. When it first occurs, it is usually associated with a fast heart rate or tachycardia , and falls into the category of supra-ventricular tachycardias. While this rhythm occurs most often in individuals with...

, AV nodal tachycardia, and accessory atrio-ventricular connections. In 1972 he showed that the arrhythmia of patients with ventricular tachycardia

Ventricular tachycardia

Ventricular tachycardia is a tachycardia, or fast heart rhythm, that originates in one of the ventricles of the heart...

 could also reproducibly be initiated and terminated by timed premature stimuli. These investigations were the basis for the new surgical and pacing approaches to the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias that became known as "cardiac electrophysiology

Cardiac electrophysiology

Cardiac electrophysiology is the science of elucidating, diagnosing, and treating the electrical activities of the heart. The term is usually used to describe studies of such phenomena by invasive catheter recording of spontaneous activity as well as of cardiac responses to programmed electrical...

".

Wellens also demonstrated that the reproducible initiation and termination of arrhythmias by programmed electrical stimulation of the heart allowed the study of the effect of antiarrhythmic drugs on the mechanism of the arrhythmia. In 1977 he moved to the new University of Limburg in Maastricht, Netherlands, to develop academic cardiology there. Starting from scratch, he created an internationally known center for the study and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias.

Wellens has published more than 600 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and more than 200 book chapters, and has written or edited 18 books on cardiology. More than 150 cardiologists from abroad have come to Maastricht for 6 months to 2 years for postgraduate training in cardiac electrophysiology. At present, Dr Wellens directs a large academic cardiology department with a staff of twenty cardiologists and a well known cardiology training program. He is also an internationally known teacher and lecturer and member of many international cardiological societies.