JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb. 6, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PSS World Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq:PSSI – News) announced today that, effective March 1, 2012, Jenny R. Kobin, age 45, will join the Company as Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Kobin will report to David M. Bronson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

In her new role, Ms. Kobin will provide strategic leadership for investor relations, public relations and corporate communications initiatives integral to the ongoing success of the Company. She will also serve as the liaison between PSS and external stakeholders including analysts, institutional investors, individual shareholders, media and the local community.

In making the announcement, Mr. Bronson said, “We are very pleased to welcome Jenny Kobin to our team. Her breadth of investor relations, capital markets and healthcare industry expertise will enable us to further strengthen relationships with the investment community and build appreciation for our mission, strategic plans and performance. Jenny's experience and value-added interactions led to her top five ranking in Institutional Investor magazine's 2011 Sell-Side List of Best IR Professionals in the Biotech Industry.”

An industry veteran, Ms. Kobin has more than 20 years of experience partnering with companies on investor relations and strategic financial communications. She most recently served as Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for Inspire Pharmaceuticals, a specialty biopharmaceutical company. She previously led the investor relations functions at TriPath Imaging, a medical device company, and SciQuest, a healthcare e-procurement and supply chain solutions provider. Ms. Kobin began her career in investor relations at Bank of America and in corporate finance at J.C. Bradford & Co., a regional investment bank. Ms. Kobin holds a B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. She is an active member of the National Investor Relations Institute and recently served a four-year term on its national Board of Directors.

PSS World Medical, Inc. markets and distributes medical products to physicians, elder care providers and alternate-site healthcare providers throughout the United States. Since its inception in 1983, PSS has become a leader in the market segments that it serves with a focused approach to customer service and operational excellence. The Company's stated purpose is to strengthen the clinical success and financial health of caregivers by solving their biggest problems.

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QUESTION: I am a 55-year-old man who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It is a neuroendocrine tumor. My doctor will be performing surgery in a couple of weeks and has discussed some new drugs that the Food and Drug Administration recently approved. Can you help me understand my diagnosis and the new drugs?

Answer: A cancer diagnosis can make a person feel very alone, but be assured you are not. About 44,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year — accounting for about 3% of all cancer diagnoses.

Neuroendocrine tumors and the more common type of pancreatic cancer start from different types of cells. They have different symptoms and are treated differently. People can lead relatively normal lives for several years with a neuroendocrine tumor, even if the disease has spread outside the pancreas.

There are two new FDA-approved drugs for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. They are sunitinib (Sutent) and everolimus (Afinitor). These new drugs disrupt molecular-level signaling within cancerous cells. They work in a much more targeted way than conventional chemotherapy. Cancer specialists see these two new drugs and drugs like them as the exciting new wave of cancer therapy.

Your doctor may have reviewed this information with you, but it may help to briefly describe the pancreas. It is a gland that's situated at the back of the abdomen, where it's close to and connected with many other structures in your body. The pancreas has two main functions: It produces digestive fluids and enzymes that are released into the small intestine, and it produces insulin and other hormones that are released into the bloodstream.

It is thought that the common type of pancreatic cancer comes from cells that produce digestive juices, while the neuroendocrine tumors arise from islet cells responsible for insulin and other hormones. This is the traditional view, but new evidence is suggesting that both types of cancer may originate from stem cells.

Your doctor has probably explained that your type of cancer can be removed surgically. Generally speaking, though, the operation is not performed if the cancer has spread beyond the pancreas itself. In that case, a surgical procedure does little to alter the course of the disease.

Up to 30% of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors result in excess release of insulin or other hormones. If too much insulin is pumped out, blood sugar levels can plummet. Extra gastrin, a hormone that stimulates the stomach, can lead to stomach ulcers. Surplus glucagon can make blood sugar levels go up.

Now medications called somatostatin analogs are used to control hormone release. They may also slow the growth of the tumors.

Conventional chemotherapy is used to treat pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer after it has spread. It extends lifespan, but it doesn't cure the cancer.

The two new drugs sunitinib (Sutent) and everolimus (Afinitor) are exciting alternatives to conventional chemotherapy. Sunitinib inhibits an enzyme critical to a complex chain of chemical events — a “signaling pathway.” By doing so, it inhibits the spread of cancer cells.

Everolimus inhibits a different enzyme, mTOR, and a different pathway. The basic concept of zeroing in on a molecular-level target specific to cancer cells is the same.

Research shows that sunitinib and everolimus can cut the growth of pancreatic neuroendocrine cancers in half. But these new medications do have side effects, including high blood pressure and low white blood cell counts.

The bottom line is that in this new era of targeted drugs, unusual cancers are becoming more treatable. A diagnosis of cancer is never welcome, but your diagnosis comes at a hopeful time.

Have a question? Send it to harvard_adviser@hms.harvard.edu

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Connecticut men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun is suffering from spinal stenosis.
(Getty Images)

STORRS, Conn. (AP)—University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun is taking an indefinite medical leave of absence, the school announced on Friday.

The Hall of Fame coach, who turns 70 in May, has been suffering for several months from spinal stenosis, a lower back condition that causes him severe pain and hampers mobility, according to the release.

“Last summer, Jim had some significant back pain and has seen two excellent back specialists,” said Dr. Peter Schulman, Calhoun’s primary care doctor. “The initial approach recommended to him was stretching, physical therapy and exercise, and that was successful for several months. It turns out that there is some degenerative problem in the lumbar vertebrae and it’s impinging on the nerves.”

George Blaney, the team’s associate head coach, will lead the team in Calhoun’s absence. The Huskies (14-7, 4-5 Big East) have lost four games in a row. They host Seton Hall on Saturday before travelling to Louisville Monday.

The school confirmed that Calhoun will miss at least those two games.

“Jim has been able to manage it with the physical therapy and stretching, but over the last several days, things have become worse and he is not able to deal with this on a day to day basis, so other options need to be considered,” Schulman said. “Right now, he is physically unable to coach.”

Calhoun has had a history of health problems. He is a three-time cancer survivor, overcoming prostate cancer in 2003 and skin cancer twice, most recently in 2008.

Calhoun is No. 6 on the all-time wins list with 867. He has won three national championships at Connecticut and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005. He coached the team to its fourth Final Four and third national title last April.

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JANESVILLE — The Janesville and Beloit area is among eight locations the Medical College of Wisconsin is considering for a community-based medical education program designed to address Wisconsin’s impending physician shortage.

The private college in Milwaukee is studying the feasibility of placing a community-based medical school focused on primary care medicine in one or more locations in the state. Curriculum would focus on practicing in rural or urban areas that are underserved.

Administrators are hoping to complete the studies by the end of March and focus on one or two sites by spring or early summer, said Dick Katschke, associate vice president for public affairs.

The goal is to launch the first program as early as 2014 and no later than 2015.

Other regions under consideration are: Fox River Valley (Appleton, Oshkosh, Fond du Lac) Green Bay, Eau Claire, La Crosse, north central Wisconsin (Wausau, Stevens Point, Marshfield), northwest Wisconsin and Racine/Kenosha.

The Wisconsin Hospital Association projects that the state will need to add 100 physicians annually to avoid a shortfall of 2,000 physicians by 2030.

In this region, the southwestern counties of Grant, Iowa and Lafayette have been federally designated as physician shortage areas.

The goal for the program is to partner with local colleges and universities, local health systems and local government, Katschke said.

Doctors in Janesville or Beloit, for example, could be among the instructors, and students would be on clinical rotations within the local health care facilities, he said. The college also will be studying the expertise available at local universities with the potential that professors could teach some basic science courses, he said.

A typical medical school program is four years, and the plan would be to have students complete all four years in the community along with a residency, he said.

“The reality is wherever you do your residency training is the best predictor of where you’re going to practice medicine,” he said.

“One of the things we’d be looking at in the process is the enthusiasm and commitment of local hospitals/health systems to develop residency programs,” he said. “It’s not enough if we offered medical education in the Janesville area but then have no residency positions.”

The average medical student graduates with $150,000 of debt, he said, so the college also is looking at possibly developing a 3.5-year model to cut tuition costs.

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COLUMBIA, Mo. — At first, David Oliver ignored the bump on his neck that he noticed while shaving. The medical school professor assumed it was calcified scar tissue from a previous surgery.

But the growth didn't go away, and his sore back grew more painful. A doctor's diagnosis confirmed the worst: He had a form of upper throat cancer called nasal pharyngeal carcinoma. It had spread to his lymph nodes and bones.

Then Oliver, who has spent a career teaching medical students and hospital workers how to care for dying patients, took an unusual step. He made a video to break the news to colleagues. And when the clip spread far beyond this Missouri college town, Oliver undertook a bigger mission: documenting his treatment in regular videos and promoting an unusually public conversation on medicine and mortality.

“If there was ever a time to be a good teacher, this is it,” he said. “I've got a chance.”

Oliver, a 69-year-old specialist on aging and a former health care executive, at first struggled to absorb the diagnosis in September. His cancer is considered treatable but not curable.

He wanted to avoid the inevitable stares from colleagues at the University of Missouri's medical school, even those whose jobs often required them to confront terminal illness. He knew there would be whispers in the hallway and uncertainty about how – or even whether – to discuss the disease.

Oliver's initial video was meant to “put them at ease when they saw me. I'm still David,” he said. “I might have five years. I might have six months. But I want you to be comfortable.”

The video quickly spread after Oliver's five adult children shared the three-minute clip with Facebook friends, who in turn shared it with their own friends. A short time later, he started a video blog and a YouTube site.

For his followers, the updates alone weren't enough. Questions soon followed.

A viewer from Japan, his stepdaughter's former study abroad teacher, wanted advice on how to comfort his own friend with cancer. Medical students probed for suggestions about patient care. A college professor in Florida asked permission to use the video in class.

A former Vietnam War protester who four decades ago entered the then-nascent field of gerontology, Oliver spent decades sharing lessons on how to die. Now, buoyed by the power of social media, he was showing others how to live.

Anyone who expected to feel sorry for Oliver was quickly disabused of that notion after watching his first diary entry. A die-hard Missouri Tigers fan, Oliver made sure to highlight the two “puke buckets” he planned to obtain for chemotherapy and radiation treatments: one emblazoned with the rival Kansas Jayhawks logo, the other bearing an Oklahoma Sooner, another foe.

Beyond the humor, Oliver realized his illness provided a chance to help prepare patients and their loved ones, to trade whispers for matter-of-fact observations, to push the conversation from the shadows into the virtual public square.

The second video installment featured Oliver getting his head shaved, his full crop of grayish-blond hair falling to the salon floor before the chemo drugs took their toll.

By the third video, his bald head was gleaming. Oliver stood behind a dozen pill bottles containing a wide range of drugs – from the steroid dexamethasone to morphine. He talked about dealing with “chemo brain,” the persistent mental fog that trails the otherwise lucid professor post-treatment.

In mid-December, a noticeably subdued Oliver appeared on camera to chronicle the 21 days between his three chemotherapy treatments to that point. He talked about the highs of the first few days, fueled by energy-boosting steroids that made him feel “ready to run a triathlon.” Then comes the crash, Oliver explained, five days of agony marked by dizziness, diarrhea, constipation, mouth sores, confusion, tingling, hand cramps, rashes and disorientation.

“It's a trick,” he said about the initial euphoria. “The Kryptonite comes. Superman is dead on the fifth day.”

Ever the professor, he used a bar graph to illustrate his three-week cycles.

Four months of treatment have also given Oliver a window into modern health care from the patient's perspective. He hasn't liked all that he's seen, particularly the limited interaction between doctors and nurses. He makes sure that his caregivers are also watching his video dispatches.

“I'm in a position to be extremely critical while they're giving me treatment,” Oliver said. “They consider me an advocate. They want me to help with their patient training.”

Oliver, a former executive at Heartland Health System in St. Joseph, knows he can engage with his doctors on a level of familiarity that most patients cannot. That's another motivation for his videos, to help level the playing field.

“I'm not intimidated by physicians. I realize they are people like everybody else,” he said. “They make mistakes like everybody else. … This is my opportunity to talk about these flaws and disappointments.”

As the disease lingers, he and his wife of 16 years, Debra Parker Oliver, must also plan for life after his death.

A few short months ago, that talk consisted mostly of retirement, visits with the grandchildren and their next ocean cruise. Now it means stressful sessions with financial advisers and making plans for his memorial service.

“I am not afraid to die,” Oliver said. “I am a gerontologist. I know that none of us get out of this alive.”

His wife, an associate professor and former hospice worker who also works in the family and community medicine department, is less certain.

“Maybe he's not afraid to die, but he's afraid of dying,” she said, her husband by her side. “The idea of this man being confined to a bed, maybe not being able to speak, is much more scary than what you are willing to admit.”

On a recent visit to the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, the couple received some encouraging news: A scan showed no visible lesions, meaning all were less than 1 centimeter in length. He will return later this month for two final rounds of chemotherapy followed by three months of freedom from medical procedures before getting another scan.

Best of all, the good news buys him time.

Time for a long-awaited cruise to Istanbul and Rome. Maybe time to travel to the NCAA basketball tournament in March to watch his beloved Tigers as the team seeks its first-ever Final Four berth.

The cancer is “still there. It will grow back,” he said. “Eventually it will grow back and kill me.”

No one knows how much time remains. If it's more than a year, he added, “we can produce a lot more videos.”

___

Online:

David's Cancer Journey, http://dbocancerjourney.blogspot.com

___

Follow Alan Scher Zagier at http://twitter.com/azagier

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