Roland Archambault was the 13th patient to undergo open heart surgery at Landmark Medical Center.

He was not daunted by the implications of being number 13 –– not by any superstition, and not by his status as one of the very first patients in a brand-new surgery program that the Woonsocket hospital started in May 2005.

“I had no fear,” says Archambault, now 74 and living in Woonsocket. “The doctors, the nurses, everybody –– I couldn’t ask for better.”

Archambault is vice president of Mended Hearts, the local chapter of a national support group for heart patients. Yesterday he joined other Mended Hearts leaders to talk about the loss of Landmark’s three-year-old heart surgery program, which is closing down because it could not attract enough patients.

For these heart-surgery survivors, the loss goes beyond the gleaming new operating rooms and enthusiastic medical team recruited to run the program, in cooperation with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

For patients in northern Rhode Island, they said, Landmark’s heart surgery program was a source of pride and comfort, keeping advanced treatment close to home –– something that may become rare as medical care is centralized in big academic hospitals.

“I can’t say enough about the heart program,” Archambault says. He got up and walked the night of his triple bypass, spent five days in the hospital, and today says he feels 20 years younger than his age. “We had the best in New England. They treated you like family.”

Effective Wednesday, Landmark stopped all elective heart surgery. The hospital will continue emergency surgeries until June 1 or whenever it has made acceptable arrangements with other hospitals. But its angioplasty and diagnostic catheterization programs will continue.

Landmark’s program is closing chiefly for money reasons. Hospital officials estimated that they needed to perform 330 surgeries per year to break even, and had little hope of doing more than 80. The demand for heart surgery has declined thanks to the success of alternative treatments, and Landmark was unable to attract the Massachusetts patients it had hoped for.

Also, national and state standards hold that heart-surgery programs need to treat hundreds of patients a year to maintain quality of care. No one has questioned the quality of Landmark’s program –– but it would not have met volume standards.

But the Mended Hearts folks talked about a different kind of quality.

Dr. Robert Ward, a retired dentist, says it was hard on his family when he underwent a heart transplant in Boston, requiring four months of hospitalization. When he returned to Landmark for follow-up care, he said, “The compassion, kindness and support was overwhelming.” Even though heart transplants will probably never be offered in Rhode Island, Ward joined Mended Hearts to help promote locally based heart care.

It makes a difference, says Ward, if the nurse taking care of you is someone who goes to your church or is married to your kids’ basketball coach. “An important part of healing is the spirit you feel –– compassion, empathy. …If they make you feel you’re going to get better, it has as much impact as medication.”

Bob Scott, president of Landmark Mended Hearts, worries that some patients may die or fare poorly if they have to be transported a greater distance.

But the shutdown is not a total loss. Landmark will continue to perform angioplasty, a procedure in which doctors thread a slender tube into the heart to open clogged arteries, and diagnostic catheterizations, in which the tube is used to diagnose but not treat heart problems. Those services would not have become available if Landmark had not ventured into cardiac surgery, because state regulations require that any hospital performing angioplasty must also have a heart-surgery program.

Late Wednesday, the Health Department granted Landmark a variance from that regulation, effective June 1, provided that Landmark develops a backup plan in case angioplasty patients need surgery. Landmark is now required to establish a relationship with a hospital that offers heart surgery and an ambulance company so patients can be quickly transferred in an emergency.

Bill Fischer, Landmark spokesman, said that the hospital performed two heart surgeries this week. One was the hospital’s last elective surgery.

The other was an emergency operation performed on a patient who had undergone an angioplasty and was found to need surgery.

Soon, such patients will have to go to another hospital.

ffreyer@projo.com