prof. dr. Dirk Kunst

About Dirk Kunst

Dirk Kunst, ENT doctor and Skull base surgeon at MUMC+ and Radboudumc, has been appointed Professor of Otorhinolaryngology, in particular Skull Base Pathology at Maastricht University. Kunst completed his training within the Radboudumc in 2003, after which he completed an oncologic KWF Fellowship in skull base pathology in Nijmegen and Marseille. Since 2006 he has been working as a skull base surgeon in Nijmegen and since 2018 also in Maastricht. His field of work concerns the treatment of pathology at the level of the entire skull base. At both locations he is chairman of the skull base working group. The departments of ENT surgery/ Head and Neck surgery, neurosurgery and radiotherapy in the Maastricht UMC+ and Radboudumc have entered into a structural collaboration as a center in the field of skull base pathology. An important goal within his appointment is to fulfill a bridging function between the Maastricht UMC+ and the Radboudumc. The ambition of the collaboration is to provide high quality and innovative patient care, education and the clustering and expansion of scientific research; this center has acquired international esteem. Together, the two UMCs have an adhesion area of about five million people.

Dirk Kunst has been active as chief editor of the Dutch Journal of Otorhinolaryngology for 6 years. In addition, he holds positions within the Dutch Association for Patients with Paragangliomas and the Neurofibromatosis Association Netherlands (NFVN). He is past-president of the European Skull Base Society (ESBS) and currently he is Excom member of the ESBS. In 2024 the ESBS congress was organized in The Netherlands.

In addition, he is chairman of the National Consultation of Expertise Centers in Skull Base Pathology (LOES) and is member of the Guideline Steering Committee for Head and Neck Tumors, within the Dutch Society of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery.

He is co-author of almost 200 scientific papers and involved in the development of various skull base guidelines.