Erik Hofman

Erik Hofman is a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

In 2015 he started his residency in cardiothoracic surgery in the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Hospital Amsterdam, where he was initially trained in open thoracic surgery. Shortly after the start of his training he initiated VATS for lung resections.

From 2012 till 2025 he worked as a cardiothoracic surgeon in the St. Antonius Hospital Nieuwegein, a large general hospital with the largest cardiothoracic department in the Netherlands. Besides performing general and minimally invasive cardiac surgery, he was responsible for the thoracic unit within the department.

In 2017 the first robot-assisted lung resection was performed by Erik and his team. From then on the program grew every year and also a fellow lung surgeon was trained. Besides training surgeons in his own hospital he was given the opportunity to train many surgical teams as a proctor for Intuitive Surgical.

As from June 2025 Erik left Nieuwegein for a position in the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the largest university hospital of the Netherlands. As his current department incorporates one of the largest thoracic oncology centers, he is able to expand his experience in complex lung resections (mostly performed with the da Vinci system) and transplantation surgery.

The Erasmus medical center is also a national center of expertise for thymic diseases.

The coming years the department will focus on improving quality of surgery and patient care, expanding and integrating the use of 3D reconstructions to predict and facilitate surgical procedures. Integration of artificial intelligence will also become part of this path to the future.