Dr. Markus Sikkel

Dr. Sikkel underwent academic and cardiology training in the UK at Imperial College London. He undertook his PhD in cardiovascular sciences at the same institute and specialized in antiarrhythmic pharmacology. He was appointed as an electrophysiology attending at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in 2017 and became Section head for electrophysiology in 2023. His clinical interests include atrial fibrillation management, conduction system pacing, complex “interventional” cardiac resynchronization therapy, complex arrhythmia mapping and ablation and wholistic multidisciplinary care in the management of arrhythmias.

His main research interest is in the theme of "Responsible Cardiology in a Resource Limited System". This includes:

1. Consideration of when and why patients are not best served by our current system, particularly pertaining to interventions in cardiology which all too often are over-used. This often involves retrospective analysis of the current range of practices which varies by provider.
2. Exploring whether systemic changes or technological innovations including AI algorithms can reduce the overuse of certain therapies that do not significantly improve outcomes but nevertheless cost our resource-limited system a great deal of money and expose patients to an unnecessary healthcare burden.
3. Maximizing benefits and minimizing complications of existing therapeutics through modelling who should receive the therapies, how those therapies should be applied and when to apply those therapies.

In addition, he maintains an interest in technological advances in pacing and arrhythmia management, novel pharmacological mechanisms in arrhythmia management and resuscitation science.