UKHC Cardiologists Celebrated During Lectureship Series

The annual Dr. Nancy C. Flowers and Dr. Leo G. Horan Lectureship Series in Cardiology lecture will be virtual this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It will begin at noon on Friday, Sept. 11. Dr. Paul Ridker, senior physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, will serve as the honorary speaker and present, “100 Years from C-reactive Protein to Anti-cytokine Therapy for Atherosclerosis: A History of Discovery.” The lecture series was established in 2017 in memory of Flowers and the strong legacy she left behind at UK HealthCare's (UKHC) Gill Heart & Vascular Institute. Her family created the series in hopes that Flowers' memory will continue to inspire cardiologists and drive breakthroughs in research. Flowers and her husband, Dr. Leo Horan, became faculty members at the UK College of Medicine in 2005. Before moving to New Mexico in 2009, the husband-and-wife team taught and ran the heart station at Gill Heart & Vascular Institute. Even after their move, they continued to contribute to UKHC by remotely reading EKGs. Horan and Flowers were pioneers in the field of electrophysiology and set the criteria for the first cardiac electrophysiology training programs. Both were cardiology chiefs during their careers. "Dr. Flowers was the first female president of the prestigious Association of University Cardiologists and the second female to serve as governor of a chapter of the American College of Cardiology," said Dr. Susan Smyth, director of the Gill Heart & Vascular Institute. "We have and continue to learn so much from their work." Upon Flowers' death, Horan made a gift to UKHC. This gift, along with the couple's contributions to the Gill Heart & Vascular Institute and the field of cardiovascular medicine, is why the Heart Station is named in their memory and honor.