Maggots stave off surgery for Tucson woman

[ad_1]

TUCSON, Arizona (KOLD News 13) – It’s the creepy season for creepy crawlies, but maggots? Tucson Medical Center recently used it to save a patient from surgery. It’s a method that could be more used.

“She had sores on both sides of her ankles, very severe wounds, and she had several medical conditions that have weakened her immune system,” said Dr. Erika Huston, an on-call podiatrist at TMC.

Dr. Huston and nurse Ashlee Garcia treated a woman who had infections in her leg wounds and actually passed one of them with live maggots, which gave the medical team an idea.

“My original plan was to take her for an operation to clean and remove the maggots and dead tissue,” said Dr. Huston. “(I) took the bandage off the next day and the maggots had clearly cleaned the wound … so I said, ‘Let’s see if we can do this while she’s here.'”

“They are very picky about maggots. So you just eat the dead tissue and the wound remains essentially the same size, ”said Ashlee Garcia, Wound Care Nurse.

By ordering and carefully applying medical maggots, that is, maggots raised in a sterile environment, the patient’s injuries did not get bigger or worse, they got better.

“You often don’t need an operation because the maggots have already done my job for me,” said Dr. Huston.

The maggots are carefully placed and left for about two days while they eat the dead tissue. It is a known practice, but it is not used too widely. It was approximately 15 years since TMC had ordered and used maggots on a patient. Often the biggest hurdle is the patient’s reluctance to use maggots on their wounds.

“I would say they at least doubled in the 48 hours,” said Garcia. “She was very open to it, she didn’t mind that much, she didn’t want to see the process, but she really agreed with the concept.”

The patient was given an IV antibiotic to help with infection, and the medical team urges people not to try to treat maggot wounds on their own.

“The free-range maggots, as we call them, are not sterile, you don’t want to stick your foot out and hope a fly will land on them … it’s not hygienic,” said Dr. Huston.

The patient has since been discharged and is making her final recovery at home. It’s a process that this team hopes can potentially use more to give patients a faster recovery time and avoid surgery.

Copyright 2021 KOLD News 13. All rights reserved.

[ad_2]