NHS using maggots to heal wounds
LIVE maggots are being increasingly used by the NHS to clean wounds amid the threat of antibiotic resistance threatening patients’ wellbeing.
According to a report in The Daily Telegraph, the treatment – which involves applying sterilised fly larvae to wounds to eat dead tissue – was common practice in the first half of the 20th century, but faded with the use of antibiotics in the 1940s.
However, thanks to antibiotic resistance, maggots are again being used in the NHS and overseas. The paper reports that superbugs kill around 700,000 people a year, a figure predicted to reach 10 million by 2050.
BioMonde, a multinational wound care company based in Bridgend, rears maggots from greenbottle blowflies and sells around 25,000 “biobags” containing the insects across Europe annually – including 9,000 to the NHS.
Its website says: “Larval therapy, also known as ‘maggot therapy’ or ‘biosurgery’, involves the use of larvae of the greenbottle fly, which are introduced into a wound to remove necrotic, sloughy and/or infected tissue.
“Larvae can also be used to maintain a clean wound after debridement if a particular wound is considered prone to resloughing.
“The technique, which has been used for centuries, has been reintroduced into modern medicine by doctors and wound care specialists who have found that larvae are able to cleanse wounds much more rapidly than conventional dressings.”
The Telegraph said that the bags, each containing between 50 and 400 live maggots, are placed on wounds that will not heal with antibiotics. The maggots eat away the rotten flesh, containing and killing off the infection.
“Maggots are viewed as an agent of decay, when in fact they’re brilliant little creatures... and work incredibly well in wounds with resistant infections,” said Yamni Nigam, a professor of healthcare science at Swansea University.
“We’re on the cusp of this global catastrophe of antimicrobial resistance and larval therapy is sometimes considered a backup plan or last resort to tackle resistance – but actually it is part of the solution.”
The use of live maggots was first popularised by an American scientist,
William Baer, who used them to treat soldiers’ wounds during the First World War.
“It’s a tried and trusted treatment that has stood the test of time for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” said Rebecca Llewellyn, a clinical support assistant at BioMonde. “[It] is considered by some as an old-fashioned treatment, but it is definitely useful in a modern setting.”