Maggot therapy

Wound cleaned by larvae or maggots

Maggot Therapy is the medical use of specially selected and tested, disinfected fly larvae ("maggots") for cleaning non-healing wounds. The technique involves:
1) Opening the wound or skin around the wound.
2) Inserting fly larvae contained within a sealed pouch into the wound hole .
3) Removing the larvae pouch from wound after 2 days and replacing it with fresh larvae.


Medicinal maggots have three actions: 1) they clean wounds by dissolving the dead (necrotic), infected tissue; 2) they disinfect the wound, by killing bacteria; and 3) they stimulate wound healing.

But how does it happen? Larvae or maggots eat up the only dead tissue when they grow and do not damage healthy tissue. They secrete a broad spectrum of proteolytic enzymes that liquefy dead tissue and as a result, they increase in length from 1-2 mm to 8-10 mm within a period of 3-4 days and cleanup and heal the wound.

Ramneek Maan Singh

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_therapy