Professor Patrick Washington Serruys is a globally recognized leader in interventional cardiology whose pioneering work has fundamentally reshaped cardiovascular medicine over four decades. Born in 1947, he completed his preclinical medical studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium, graduating summa cum laude before commencing his clinical career. He has served as a senior interventional cardiologist since 1979 and established himself as a leader in interventional research from 1988 onward. For twenty years, he led the Interventional Cardiology department at the Thoraxcenter in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where he held the distinction of being appointed to the first chair in interventional cardiology created by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Currently, he serves as Established Professor of Interventional Medicine and Innovation at the University of Galway, Ireland, building upon his previous positions as Professor of Medicine at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam until 2014 and Honorary Professor of Cardiology at Imperial College London until 2021.
Professor Serruys has pioneered numerous interventional procedures and devices that have revolutionized cardiovascular care, including bare-metal stents, drug-eluting stents, biodegradable drug-eluting scaffolds, and transcatheter aortic valve implantation. In 2006, he and Professor John Ormiston led the development of fully biodegradable drug-eluting scaffolds, eliminating the need for permanent metallic stents in patients. His earlier work established the methodology of quantitative coronary angiography, which became fundamental to assessing coronary interventions. With an impressive H-index of 216, he has authored or co-authored more than 4,000 peer-reviewed publications and over 42 books, including the ESC Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. His research has encompassed over 90 clinical trials involving more than 191,000 patients, evaluating the clinical benefits of coronary procedures ranging from balloon angioplasty to advanced stent technologies.
Beyond his research contributions, Professor Serruys has profoundly shaped the field through leadership roles, having founded and served as past Editor-in-Chief of EuroIntervention, the official journal of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions. His transformative work has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards including the Gold Medal Award from the European Society of Cardiology, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Cardiology, and the James B. Herrick Award from the American Heart Association. He has served on editorial boards of more than 30 international scientific journals and continues to innovate in non-invasive imaging of coronary artery disease combining anatomy and functional assessments. Professor Serruys remains dedicated to advancing interventional medicine and innovation at the University of Galway, where his research aims to support medtech industry and pharma trials while conducting clinical trials at the forefront of innovation to improve patient care with cost-effective approaches.
