NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Jill E. McCormick, Director, Marketing & Planning
St. Edward Mercy Health System
Phone: 479-314-6037
Email: jill.mccormick@mercy.net

St. Edward Mercy Celebrates 45 Years of Mammography Service

Fort Smith, Ark. – September 28, 2009 – St. Edward Mercy Medical Center will celebrate approximately 45 years of providing mammograms to the River Valley at a ceremony at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 7 in the Women’s Imaging Department, located in the Centers of Excellence. The program will include a testimonial by a patient as well as samples of how mammography technology has changed over the years.

St. Edward Mercy has provided over 172,000 mammograms since the program’s inception in the mid 1960s. Since 2000, St. Edward Mercy performs an average of almost 10,000 mammograms each year.

St. Edward Mercy utilizes state-of-the-art digital mammograms, an upgrade offered beginning in 2002 with all rooms being upgraded to digital in 2007. The St. Edward Mercy Mammography Van, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, converted to digital technology in 2008.

Recently, the Medical Center received certification from the Arkansas State Department of Health and was again accredited by the state.

Mammography technology has progressed over the past 45 years. In the late 1980s, high-quality film cassettes with high-resolution screens came out with a three-minute auto processor, which was later reduced to 90 seconds. In the late 1970s, a Xerox-brand machine that utilized blue powder and paper processing was the latest in technology. From the mid-1960s, a high-resolution industrial film was used with the film being processed in wet tanks with wet processing. This X-ray machine had a long extension cylinder that was used to hold the breast in place.

The St. Edward Mercy Health System includes St. Edward Mercy Medical Center plus three satellite facilities: Mercy Hospital Turner Memorial in Ozark, North Logan Mercy Hospital in Paris, and Mercy Hospital of Scott County in Waldron. The St. Edward Mercy Medical Center, the flagship hospital of the St. Edward Mercy Health System, is located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and serves over 400,000 residents in 13 counties.

Additionally, the System includes several primary care clinics that are accepting new patients in Van Buren, Waldron, Mansfield, and Fort Smith. Other services offered are an outpatient physical therapy clinic in Charleston and an after-hours clinic in Paris.

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