LEWISTON — Some 30 residents of the greater Lewiston-Auburn area have gained approval of their efforts to establish a chapter of Mended Hearts Inc., a national nonprofit organization made up of and serving people with heart disease and their family members and friends.

Priscilla Soucy, regional director for the Mended Hearts Northeast Division, visited the Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute recently to convey chapter charter status to representatives of the new local organization.

“Installing the officers of Mended Hearts Chapter 358 and presenting the charter is the culmination of a year of planning, recruiting members, providing medical speakers and visiting hundreds of patients on the cardiac floors. This new chapter will provide support and education, and hold special events in years to come for all cardiac patients. Mended Hearts is on the map in Maine,” Soucy said.

Supported by a national office, Mended Hearts is comprised of 280 local chapters that serve those affected by heart disease across the United States and Canada. The organization works with patients at 460 hospitals and rehabilitation clinics and offers services to heart patients through visiting programs, support group meetings and educational forums.

Mended Hearts volunteers make 227,000 hospital visits to patients and 30,000 visits to family members and caregivers annually.

The Mended Hearts network is comprised of heart patients, family members, caregivers and health care professionals who provide information and support to recovering patients and their families during hospital visits, by telephone, through group meetings and via the Internet. The volunteers draw upon their own personal experiences and help the patient begin to understand there can be a healthy, active life with heart disease.

Once patients are discharged from the hospital, Mended Hearts continues to offer help and information through local support group meetings where members listen, share their experiences and talk about such matters as lifestyle changes, depression, recovery and treatment. Group meetings often serve as forums for medical professionals to answer questions.

Mended Hearts members receive the quarterly magazine, “Heartbeat,” that offers health information, survivor stories and chapter updates.

The Lewiston-Auburn Mended Hearts volunteers began organizing in September 2008. The members became a satellite of Mended Hearts Greater Hartford, Conn., and in February, members began visiting patients at CMHVI’s Single-Stay Unit after participating in a training program. In September, the group added inpatient visiting to Central Maine Medical Center’s Cardiopulmonary Nursing Unit. The group has visited nearly 750 patients to date.

Ed Madden of Lisbon, the chapter’s president, said he got involved in the effort “to help patients understand there can be a healthy, active life after heart disease. In my own case, I have had not one, but two bypass operations, ­ a four-way and the second was a single. That fact alone gets a wide-eyed look,” he said.

The volunteers actively participated in the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk this past fall, raising funds for programs and continued research on heart disease.

For more information, contact Cheryl Strout RN, Central Maine Heart and Vascular Cardiac Rehabilitation, at 795-2650.