Source: Hypertension  |  Posted 9 years ago

Chronic pressure ulcers are more effectively and efficiently debrided by maggot therapy compared to more conventional methods. Furthermore, patients readily accept this less traditional treatment and adverse events are not common.

This was the conclusion reached by Dr R A Sherman from the pathology Department, University of California, in Irvine, California, United States, who studied the safety and efficacy of maggot therapy for patients with chronic pressure ulcers.

A cohort of 103 hospital patients with 145 pressure sores was evaluated. Fifty patients with 61 ulcers were treated with applied maggots, 70 patients with 84 ulcers were not. Subsequently, debridement and wound healing could be quantified in 43 wounds treated with maggots and 49 managed by conventional methods.

Complete debridement was achieved in 80 percent of maggot treated wound but this was only achieved in 48 percent of the wounds totally debrided using the conventional therapy alone.

Dr Sherman established that within three weeks, wounds treated with maggot therapy contained a third of the necrotic tissue and twice the granulation tissue by comparison with the more traditional treatment. Furthermore, necrotic tissue decreased 0.8 cm[^]2[] and total wound surface decreased 1.2 weekly as opposed to a decrease in necrotic tissue of 0.2 cm[^]2[] and total wound area increase of 1.2 cm[^]2[] over the same period with the conventional method.