History of Maggot Therapy

Historically, maggots have been known for centuries to help heal wounds. Many military surgeons noted that soldiers whose wounds became infested with maggots did better and had a much lower mortality rate than did soldiers with similar wounds not infested. There is strong evidence to suggest that wounds were intentionally infested with fly larvae by one or two confederate military surgeons during the American Civil War. But it was William Baer, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland during the late 1920's, who first treated, studied, and published a sizable series of patients into whose wounds he applied maggots. Baer is also one of the first to recommend using specific species of blow flies, specially reared and disinfected for that purposed. Baer presented his findings at conferences; his results in 98 children with osteomyelitis were published posthumously by his colleagues in 1931. MDT was successfully and routinely performed by thousands of physicians until the mid-1940's, when its use was supplanted by the new antibiotics and surgical techniques that came out of World War II. Maggot therapy was occasionally used during the 1970's and 1980's, but only when antibiotics, surgery, and modern wound care failed to control the advancing wound. The first modern clinical studies of maggot therapy were initiated in 1989, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach, CA, and at the University of California, Irvine, to answer the following questions:

• Is maggot therapy still useful today?"

• Should maggot therapy be used as an adjunct to other treatments, not merely as a last resort?"

• How does maggot therapy compare to other treatment at our disposal?"

The results of those early studies, and the many studies and reports that have followed, indicate that MDT is still useful today.By 1995, a handful of doctors in 4 countries were using MDT. In 1996, the International Biotherapy Society was founded in Wales. Today, over 3,000 therapists are using maggot therapy in 20 countries. Approximately 30,000 treatments were applied in the year 2003. In January, 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued 510(k) #33391, thereby allowing the production and distribution of "Medical Maggots" as a medical device. In February, 2004, the British National Health Service (NHS) permitted its doctors to prescribe maggot therapy. Patients no longer have to be referred to one of a few regional wound-specialty hospitals to get maggot treatments.