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Maggots have been used for years to clean dead, or necrotic, tissue from wounds. Maggots will clean wounds, leaving the viable, or good tissue, to grow, allowing the wound to heal.
There are other means of debreiding, or cleaning necrotic tissue from a wound, both mechanical and chemical, but both of these methods can also remove living tissue, enlarging the wound and increasing healing time. There are also situations where It is not possible to use other methods, but maggots can be used, due to their small size and ability to get into otherwise inaccessible wounds. Maggots also remove only the necrotic tissue, leaving the living tissue, thus decreasing healing time.

Maggots are frequently the best means of cleaning a wound but both the medical community, and the general public are resistant to the use of maggots, due to the yick factor.
If the medical community, and the general public could be educated to accept the healing role that maggots play in nature, maybe they would see that their role in medicine is natural, not yucky or unclean.
It is time for maggots to come forward and accept their place in modern medicine.
Time to ban the yick factor.There is no place for unreasonable prejudice in todays medicine.

Learn more about this author, Linda Womble.
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