A heartening experiment

   At 93 years old, Adolph Wolff 's heart has beaten more than 3.4 billion times.

   That's based on a man's average resting heart rate of 70 beats per minute, and doesn't account for his racing ticker during combat in World War II, or nine decades of exercise.

   Yet as faithful as it's been, Wolff 's heart almost stopped last summer. A leaky mitral valve, a key component of the heart, left the Colorado Springs man unable to walk more than about a dozen steps and made him prone to dizziness. His ankles and legs swelled with fluid, and he was constantly exhausted.

   He was in what doctors call "end stage" heart failure, and he was too sickly for open-heart surgery. Doctors told him little could be done.

   Today, with his time spent gardening, hiking and socializing with friends, Wolff disagrees.

   Wolff, who lives independently with his wife in northwest Colorado Springs, participated in a clinical trial at the University of Colorado Hospital at Denver in which a clip inserted on his failing valve reduced the leak, no open-heart surgery needed.

   The procedure is in its eighth year of testing on people, and it took Wolff from near death to a downright active lifestyle. His turnaround is one of the most dramatic witnessed by Dr. John D. Carroll, professor of medicine at the CU School of Medicine and director of the interventional cardiology program at University of Colorado Hospital at Denver, who performed the procedure. Carroll concedes that the clip doesn't work in every case - about four out of five so far - but when it works, "it works in a very powerful way."

   "I really feel like a newborn man," Wolff said. He recounted a recent week in which he went to a Sky Sox game, attended a horse show, hiked Cheyenne Mountain Park, played cards with friends, and attended a concert.

   The clip, called the Mitraclip, was developed by a company called Evalve, based in Menlo Park, Calif. It's an example of a wave of advancements in which structural heart repairs can be done without surgery or in minimally invasive ways, much like repairing an engine without opening a hood.

   The Mitraclip is being tried on 280 patients at 38 medical centers in the second of two clinical trials. Wolff was one of 75 additional patients selected as part of a high-risk registry, in which there are no other options.

   For the procedure, doctors thread the clip through the body's blood vessels to the heart and mitral valve. The mitral valve, like a pair of pliable double doors, opens and closes as blood pumps through the heart. The clip is attached to the valve, holding the middle of the two sides together and in most cases reducing the amount of blood leaking backward.

The clip is inserted intravenously, so no incision is required. But patients are anesthetized during the procedure. The company says the clip is made of material that should last for the rest of the patient's life, and the ongoing trial will study other durability issues. Food and Drug Administration approval is at least a year away, Carroll said.

Wolff said it was easy to enroll for an experiment when no other options were available. His recovery was instantaneous, he said. "I could drive again the next day," he recalled.