Dr. Smits is currently Director of the Interventional Cardiology Department of Maasstad Hospital Rotterdam and board member of the Dutch Heart Registration. He completed his medical training in Utrecht/Nieuwegein, the Netherlands and has been registered as a cardiologist since 1997 when he joined the staff at the Cardiology Department of the University Hospital Utrecht. His thesis was about “Clinical Aspects of Angioscopy and Intravascular Ultrasound”.
In 1999 he became an interventional cardiologist at the Thorax Center of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam under the supervision of Prof. Serruys and in 2003 became the Clinical Director of the cath lab of the Thorax Center. In 2005 he left the Thorax Center and became one of the founders of the Interventional Cardiology Department of Maasstad Hospital, the largest PCI center of Rotterdam (2000 /year). He is the lead investigator of several large multi-center trials, like COMPARE I, II, COMPARE-ACUTE, COMPARE-ABSORB, MASTER-DAPT.