Maggot Treatment Can Help Heal Diabetic Wound Now Tested in US
I have wrote before in July 2010 about using maggot as treatment to heal diabetic wound in Kuala Lumpur General Hospital Malaysia and my second post about private company that provide the services. This method of treatment to treat diabetic wound is still new, but even in short time it has show that this treatment is really effective to treat diabetic wound especially those with large and deep diabetic wound which manual dressing of this kind of diabetic wound is hectic and time consuming. Surely the wound dressing will not take long if it is done just for the sake to get it done not for the sake to get the diabetic would to heal properly and fast. Diabetic wound need a proper care to ensure it heal. Dead cell around the wound should be clean until left only red flesh of patient. Then the cell and flesh would grow faster. Now this hardwork of cleaning and dressing diabetic patient wound could be done in Malaysia. Thus doctor normally take easy way choose for amputation where healing of wound would be fast and the wound would be small. Amputation will save a doktor time and job, but it's at the end of the road for the patient. Now this worm treatment to treat diabetic wound now has been used in US. Research say that this treatment is safe but the price is expensive. Let read what this article from reuter, and what they have to say about maggot treatment to treat diabetic wound.
REUTERS - To jump-start the healing of difficult diabetic wounds, U.S. researchers have a suggestion: let maggots do the work.To allow such wounds to heal, doctors remove infected or dead tissue with scalpels or enzymes, a process they call debridement. But these tools often fail.
"These problem patients with diabetes really need better treatments in order to salvage their limbs," said Lawrence Eron from Kaiser Hospital and the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, who with colleagues presented their findings at a recent scientific meeting in Chicago."Maggot debridement treatment is overwhelmingly effective. After just one treatment these wounds start looking better," he told Reuters Health.The results from Eron's team, which treated 37 diabetics with the maggots, still haven't been vetted by independent researchers.All of the patients in the study suffered from a type of artery disease that causes poor circulation in the limbs and they all had stubborn wounds, some up to five years old.The doctors put 50 to 100 maggots, of the species Lucilia sericata, on the wounds and left them there for two days, at which time they applied new ones. They repeated this five times on average."We cage the maggots in a mesh-like material. Nylon panty hose might be used. And then we seal them so they don't get out," Eron said.Maggots secrete substances into wounds that liquefy dead tissue and then ingest the material to further degrade it in their gut. The wounds are cleaned, and other substances contained in the maggot secretions allow the development of granulation tissue, a type of connective tissue that forms during wound healing.Twenty-one of the patients had successful outcomes, defined as eradication of infection, complete removal of dead tissue, formation of robust connective tissue in the wound and more than three-quarters closure of the wound.Five wounds were infected with the "superbug" MRSA, but they healed successfully with the maggot therapy. Nine wounds were infected with another bacterium called MSSA, and six of those healed. All 10 cases with infection due to group B streptococci were successfully treated, Eron said.The treatment failed in some patients. One had excessive inflammation surrounding the wound, two bled too much, and three had problems with infected bones.Asked how he persuades patients to undergo the treatment, Eron said he carefully explains the procedure and then has them sign a consent form."A lot of patients might be somewhat wary of having live insects placed into their wounds so we explain how it works and what possible problems might occur," he said."After this, we go on to do further treatment with hydrogels, grafts of cell culture tissue, or negative pressure dressings. But to get to the point there these treatments will work, you really need to clean up the wound, get rid of dead tissue, and get robust granulation tissue into the wound -- and this is where the maggots help."
