maggots ftw
 

Medical News: Maggots Quickly Clear Chronic Leg Ulcers - in Dermatology, General Dermatology from MedPage Today

A week of wound debridement using maggots cleared necrotic tissue more effectively than conventional debridement in patients with chronic venous ulcers, a randomized French study showed.

At day eight of treatment, the percentage of the wound area covered by slough was 54.5% in patients given maggot therapy compared with 66.5% (P=0.04) of the wound area in a control group, according to Anne Dompmartin, MD, PhD, of Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Caen, and colleagues.

how much did they spend to prove a treatment that is older than christ?

I saw maggot therapy on a show on the Discovery channel once. They used clean maggots grown specifically for the therapy. It showed someone who'd gotten a wound that had gotten infected and had maggot therapy. They arm had a relatively small scar. Doctors said that if they'd used surgery that the person would have had what would amount to a huge hole in their arm where flesh and muscle would have had to have been cut out. I guess the maggots are smart enough and precise enough to eat only the bad flesh leaving the good flesh on a nearly cellular level. I think they left them in for a week or two on the person that they filmed from wound to healed. By the time they removed the dressing that held them in, they were big and pretty freakin disgusting. I understand the benefits, but man, that would be hard to volunteer for.

+1 Lets reinvent the wheel.

As opposed to maggots from the hood??

Right on. If I ever come to that stage, better keep me in a drug zone.

Give me leeches every day of the week.

I'd take it over amputation or death any day.

Never saw maggot therapy when I worked in PT... did have a batch of leeches come in when I worked in central supply, but the patient left AMA ... Tip for the docs - medical leeches make good fishing bait - if you are gonna use 'em on a patient, order extra.

"Tip for the docs - medical leeches make good fishing bait - if you are gonna use 'em on a patient, order extra."

Great idea; introduce leeches into bodies of water currently free of them.

:D

hahaha


You probably get this but just in case. The maggots were specially raised in a special sterile/clean environment with special food, etc....

They didn't collect them from roadkill or a garbage dump.

The special that I saw addressed maggots for removing bad flash from infected wounds.

It also featured leeches for circulation issues in reattached limbs and parts.

Another thing was bee stings for arthritis and pain.

I can't embed videos while I'm here at work, but there are some youtube videos for maggot therapy.

Maggot therapy (warning - a some mildly nsfw language at the beginning)

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kVaY59cU6LI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

We used maggots for wound debridement when I was in the USN ('82). They did a gret job, painless and never eat living tissue, only leave nice healthy tissue behind for grafting, etc... We kept ours in corn meal when they weren't "working"...

The practice of using them goes way back...

I'm off to the barber for a good bleeding.

maggots work great, so do leeches

Maggots only eat the dead stuff. They are pricey though, for the medical grade ones. I had a patient that had questionable hygene come in sporting some wiggly rice in her foot, cleaned it up incredibly well, freaked her right out though.

Leeches are good for vascular issues. The arteries are a LOT easier to repair than the veins. One of the big problems with reattaching bits that have been lopped off is getting the blood out of the part, as the arteries carry it to the part. Stick a leech on the end of the finger or toe, and it secretes an anti-coagulant and sucks the blood out. Keeps the piece from turning blue, then black, long enough for your body to hook up the rest of the plumbing to carry the blood back to your heart.

So, how does one know when the maggots have one their job? When they fly off the wound ?:eek:

When the wound looks good, free of most or all of the dead tissue. You usually wash them out when done with them.

Actually there are (or were) some maggots that will move right on into live tissue and keep on going. Those flies (called the primary screw worm blow fly) were eradicated from the US back in the 1930's as I recall. What they did was capture enough of the male flies (really) and irradiate them to sterilize them and turn the loose. Gradually the population just died off. It was causing a huge loss in the live stock industry. Like so many other things that were once eradicated they could find their way back. Matter of fact, in my earlier years of practice I could swear that a maggot infested would in a dog had gone far into healthy tissue and the dog had to be put down. Obviously the use of these things in a medical sense needs to be closely monitored. To this day I still get totally grossed out by these things.