Maggot Debridement Therapy

Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT) is a safe and effective method for treating many different types of poorly healing wounds. The maggots are able to clean the wound and promote healing.

Here are resources on Maggot Debridement Therapy:

Patient with 20 year history of an ulcer on his ankle

Maggot debridement therapy is a safe and very effective method for treating poorly healing wounds.

Here is an example of an ulcer on the ankle of a 59 year old man. He came into my practice after consulting many other doctors who had prescribed antibiotics or who diagnosed it as a venous stasis ulcer.

The patient first developed a wound on the medial malleolus of his right ankle when he was a young child riding in the basket of a bicycle. The medial malleolus is the protruding part on the inside of the ankle which is part of the tibial bone. The spokes of the bicycle wheel broke as his foot was trapped so the injury was severe. Eventually, this wound healed with a silver colored scar and did not bother him for about 30 years.

However, when he was in his early forties he hit his ankle with a piece of wood and developed another wound. It was not at the same location as his childhood injury but it was more proximal (3-4 inches towards the knee). Various antibiotic treatments were unsuccessful. After one antibiotic treatment he developed persistent diarrhea for one year so he was reluctant to take antibiotics again.

He had been struggling with this painful wound for almost 20 years when an acupuncturist recommended maggot debridement therapy. His next challenge was to find a physician willing to offer this. Fortunately, he was able to find me through the Monarch Labs website.

This is what his wound looked like during the first visit before receiving maggot debridement therapy.

In the following picture you can see the maggots. They are only a few millimeters in length. As they feast on the dead tissue they are able increase in size rapidly. It is not unusual for them to become four to five times bigger in one day.

Two days later the wound looked much cleaner. The maggots had removed the necrotic tissue. This makes it possible for the wound to heal and close. Interestingly, the maggots were no longer in the wound when we removed the dressing. The patient was sure that they had not escaped so the likely explanation is that the maggots ran out of dead tissue to feast on and died.

This is the second application of maggots.

This is what the wound dressing looks like. It is secured with tape on all sides to make sure that maggots don’t escape from their “cage”. The center of the dressing allows the maggots to breathe.

The following pictures are from Day 3, four days after the first application of maggots. The wound looks clean. The maggots have greatly increased in size.

Third application of maggots.

After the fourth application the wound is shallower. The diameter of the wound has not yet changed significantly. The area around the wound is less tender.

Ulcer on big toe of patient with diabetes mellitus

This 40-year-old patient presented on March 1, 2007, with a chief complaint of uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, an ulcer at the bottom of his right big toe, and an associated infection of his right leg (cellulitis). Other physicians had recommended amputation of the toe.

March 3, 2007: This is what the ulcer looked like before maggot debridement therapy. I placed maggots into the wound after I had taken this picture. I also started the patient on antibiotic treatment for cellulitis, oral hypoglycemic treatment for the diabetes, and natural thyroid hormone therapy when I found that he had untreated hypothyroidism.

March 6, 2007: I removed the maggots from the wound (two are visible in this picture) and replaced them with fresh maggots. The maggots that I placed on March 3 had quadrupled in size. The wound looked considerably cleaner.

March 19, 2007: I placed fresh maggots into the wound on March 9, March 12, March 16, and March 19. After five maggot debridement treatments the wound had remarkably decreased in size. One week later the patient called to cancel his appointment because the wound looked so good that he did not think that additional maggot debridement treatments were necessary.

June 10, 2007: When the patient returned for a follow up the wound had healed completely as shown below. He was off the diabetic medication and had lost 18 pounds since March 1, 2007.

Ulcer on heel of patient with diabetes mellitus

The following pictures are courtesy of Pam Mitchell. They show a foot with a diabetic ulcer. Maggot debridement therapy (MDT) not only saved the patient’s foot, but also her life. The maggots worked on the bone and helped the patient heal from osteomyelitis.

The first picture is just before MDT.

The second picture was taken as the maggots were ready come out.

The third picture was taken after the maggots had been removed. You can see the exposed bone at 11:00.

The fourth picture was taken two months later.

The fifth picture was taken after another month.

The sixth picture was taken after the wound had healed completely.