Maggot Therapy: For When Conventional Therapies Fail

As gross as it sounds, maggot therapy has benefited as many as 10,000 people around the world annually and has saved many people from having their feet amputated [source: BTER Foundation]. It can be used to treat the following:

• pressure ulcers
• venous stasis ulcers
• neuropathic foot ulcers
• non-healing traumatic or postsurgical wounds

[source: Harder]

Luckily, if maggot therapy doesn't work, the treatment isn't hazardous in and of itself. (Unlike ancient treatments using leeches, which in addition to usually offering no benefit would further harm, if not kill, the patient.)

Although one study found that maggots do heal wounds faster, in about three weeks' time versus four weeks for conventional measures, other studies show that maggot therapy doesn't heal the wound faster than conventional therapies, but it does clean the wound faster (up to 18 times faster) [source: Times Online].

However, maggot therapy isn't intended to replace existing therapies, so comparisons are somewhat moot. It's never a doctor's first choice to put the creepy-crawlies on a wound -- it's a therapy used only when antibiotics and surgery haven't yielded positive results. For example, the virulent staph infection MRSA is resistant to most antibiotics. But 12 of 13 people with MRSA-contaminated wounds were cured using nothing but maggots [source: University of Manchester].

When all other options have failed, it's as good as time as any to bug out. For lots more information on maggot therapy, see the next page.