Maggot Therapy on Leg Ulcers Debrides Wounds Faster

Maggot therapy, while revolting to some, has proven to be just as effective as traditional hydrogel therapy when used to heal leg ulcers, and it is quicker removing dead tissue from the surface of the ulcer. Maggot therapy is not new, in fact, it has been used to treat wounds for over seven hundred years. However, there is now new research which compares the therapy’s effectiveness to the more traditional treatment for leg ulcers, hydrogel therapy.

To some, placing maggots in their body would be off limits, but there are some cases where this form of therapy or the more traditional hydrogel therapy may be necessary to save a patients hand, foot or limb, and the therapy could actually prevent amputation. Researchers at the University of York in the United Kingdom recently released results of a study in the British Medical Journal where they determined that maggot therapy was just as effective treating leg ulcers as the traditional hydrogel therapy and the maggots actually helped to remove the dead skin from the wounds faster than the gel. However, there were no real advantages noticed from faster debridement or removal of dead skin from the wounds, with wounds of both groups healing in similar lengths of time, and reports of bacteria being around the same. .

During their study, the researchers evaluated 276 patients in the United Kingdom who were suffering with at least one leg ulcer, caused by pressure in the veins, from 2004 to 2007. The researchers used the larvae of the green bottle fly that were bread in sterile conditions and either packaged in tea bag sized packages or retained in the wound by bandages, for this first ever study, to randomly assign patients to either maggot therapy or hydrogel therapy and note the differences in the treatment results.

The team found no real measurable differences in the two treatments, with the exception of maggot therapy removing dead skin quicker, but it seemed more painful according to patients. Lead study author Nicky Cullum, a wound-care researcher at the University of York in England said, “Some patients had the maggots removed because they found it unbearably painful.” Maggot therapy isn’t necessarily any better at treating leg ulcers, than the traditional hydrogel therapy, but if someone were to have a skin graft they may benefit more from the maggot therapy.

The use of maggots in medical therapy has continued to grow since William Baer, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore Modern first established maggot therapy, after he observed the success of the treatment in World War I. In 2008, around 50,000 treatments were applied to wounds according to the Monarch Labs web site, a supplier of medical maggots. Other suppliers of maggots for medical therapy have also noticed increases in sales over the past decade. Even though scientist and researchers may not have found any major reasons to use maggot therapy over more traditional treatments for leg ulcers, it seems with the continued increase in sales of medical maggots, there are some who may prefer the maggot treatment, over the more traditional treatments. If you have a need for medical maggot therapy, you may want to discuss the treatment with your doctor.