Maggots are worming their way back into our hospitals
Maggots and leeches might not sound like your idea of 21st century medicine, but as Catherine Scott discovered, demand is on the increase.
Anne Pickford is an expert on maggots – and not the ones you put on the end of your fishing line.
Anne is a specialist nurse who has been newly appointed by pioneering wound care company, ZooBiotic, to support healthcare professionals in treating patients with maggots.
As a clinical nurse advisor with Zoobiotic, Anne will provide support to consultants, GPs and nurses.
"There has been a huge increase in healthcare professionals requesting maggot therapy for their patients, as the word has spread about how effective they are, especially as they now come enclosed in a specialised dressing," says Anne.
"Conventional dressings can take months to achieve a successful outcome, but maggot therapy usually involves one or two applications, each lasting a maximum of five days.
"Maggot therapy has been used successfully on leg ulcers, wounds associated with diabetes, pressure ulcers and other types of infected wounds."
Anne had one patient who had injured his lower leg and after nine months all had healed except for an area that persistently remained wet and sloughy. Conventional dressings had failed to produce a successful outcome.
"I went with the district nurse to apply maggot therapy, using maggots conveniently encased in a special net pouch, and after five days the wound was completely clean, revealing healthy, pink tissue," says Anne.
"The nurse who had been looking after him was astounded at the result and how easy it was apply the maggot dressing.
"Needless to say the patient was very pleased with the result, as are many others who can often become increasingly debilitated, mentally and physically, due to the pain, distress and discomfort of living with a sloughy, malodorous wound."
ZooBiotic is one of the UK's first NHS spin-off businesses, and is the global market leader in larval therapy.
The company's products are now in routine use throughout the UK to help the healing of infected, sloughy and necrotic wounds. ZooBiotic produces 600,000 maggots and 1,500 dressings per month from its purpose-built pharmaceutical production unit – supplying a client base of more than 4,000.
"Many health treatments are derived from nature, and reinvented with a sophisticated modern approach," says Anne.
"Maggots have been used effectively in wound treatment for hundreds of years, but now that they are of medicinal quality and produced in a pharmaceutical clean room, then applied to the patient in a dressing
they cannot escape from, they are much more user-friendly in a modern society."
MAGGOT FACTS
For centuries, maggots were used by physicians for treating wounds, but they fell into disuse with the widespread introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s.
Recently, maggot therapy has enjoyed a revival as healthcare professionals recognise their advantages. Not only do they remove necrotic tissue and combat infection, but maggots can actively promote the regeneration of tissue, thus bringing about wound healing.
Maggot therapy has been successfully used in the treatment of
leg ulcers, wounds associated with diabetes, pressure ulcers, and many other types of infected wounds.
Conventional treatments for these wounds can take months to achieve a successful outcome, but maggot therapy usually involves no more than one or two treatments, each lasting a maximum of
five days.
As maggot therapy acts far more quickly that conventional treatments, it can also reduce treatment times and the associated costs.
Evidence also suggests that it is successful in combating the hospital "super-bug", MRSA.
An estimated 30,000 people have been treated with medicinal quality maggots since the mid 1990s and the demand is growing rapidly throughout the world.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Three-inch blanket of snow heading our way today
- Alan Shearer in list of favourites for Leeds and England jobs: Latest odds
- Barnsley’s Keith Hill invokes Fawlty Towers over link with Leeds job
- McCormack feels United search can be narrowed down
- Redfearn throws down gauntlet as queue builds at Elland Road
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -8 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South
