They can be found in spoiled food, but they could also be used in the composition of dressings! A new healing technique with maggots has just shown a certain effectiveness, a little bit inviting!
Ragoutante certainly, but not new: the maggot-therapy is recognized as a treatment of wounds in France as well as in the United States since 2004. These maggots compete with the leeches which had been proposed to reduce the excess of blood which s’ accumulates in a wound or to restore blood circulation after a skin transplant, for example. The leech is aptly named: it absorbs excess blood and stimulates circulation with its saliva.
What are the acticots doing?
They are also used for circulation problems and lack of blood. The study that has just been done on these maggots concerns chronic wounds near the ankles: they are leg ulcers, due to venous problems and varicose veins. A real nightmare for doctors because these wounds take a long time to heal and even … when they heal …
So just make a bandage … with maggots … and everything is in order?
At least at the start of treatment, if we are to believe the study of a French team, published in a very serious journal, which compared the conventional treatment of ulcers to treatment with maggots. They enclosed in each dressing, 80 maggots, from disinfected eggs of green flies … Why green? Because these maggots only consume the dead tissue of a wound and thus, they cleanse it. This allows the appearance of new tissue and the start of healing. And locked in a bandage, the maggots can not save themselves and do their job by working the dead tissue.
Concretely what are the results of the study and how do the patients react?
During the first 8 days the maggots are more effective than the classic treatment. But this good result does not continue and the authors wonder whether the dose of maggots should not be doubled … In any case, the patients do not express any reluctance or disgust and even wanted this treatment. They feel little pain and speak of tingling. So after leech and maggot … when the ants?
Reference:
Archives of Dermatology, vol. 148, n ° 4, April 2012. Doi: 10.1001 / archdermatol.2011.1895
Maggot Therapy for Wound Debridement
.
