Nurse, the maggots [UK hospitals use of maggots for healing wounds]

The Times (UK) ^ | March 12, 2007 | by Peta Bee

[pandoraou812]

I would be happy to. If you have a need just freepmail me and I will try to find something for you. ~P~

[pandoraou812]

Thanks. I think this summer I will make it a project for my daughter & I to do. I just showed my son the Sugarloaf golf course and said how sad I was about it. He said well at least its not a strip mall or condos. So I guess he is right, at least the land is like it was for the most part. When they tore the old farm house down the main room was part of a what my mom said was a Indian cabin. I was too young at the time to remember if it was saved or not. I do know it was a great place to find arrowheads. I have not gone up there for many years ..maybe its time to go back and discover my childhood memories....~P~

[null and void]

Thank you.

[pandoraou812]

If it wasn't for TigersEye's wisdom & help. I think I would still be giving her those meds and she would still be getting sick. he helped me so much that lela considers him her online Uncle or a very special friend. its amazing how many really great people I have met on here. People that will help you and you don't know them but from on here.

[NonValueAdded]

Last year 30,000 NHS patients had maggots applied to their wounds.

Unfortunately, only 3,000 were told about it ahead of time and fully a third of the others died of a heart attack when they viewed their wounds. The worst case was a dual experimentee whose leaches attacked the maggots and the patient bled out before anyone noticed. Nurses denied that the full leg amputee was only a week before receiving maggot treatment on a toe wound, discounting the patient's claims that "something ate my leg, I swear!"

but I made that all up. Maybe.

[metmom]

I have a recipe for skunk shampoo that's basically hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and Dawn. My sister used it on her white dog, having no desire for a pink one, and the vet who saw her dog a couple days later for an unrelated issue couldn't believe how effective it was.

[pandoraou812]

It unclogs drains too! Years ago I was stuck in the house with a sink full of dishes and 4 little kids. No drain cleaner. They were amazed that mommy made a this stuff up and it bubbled and made the sink water go down.

[Winniesboy]

The government hospitals in the UK are so ancient and filthy, they don't need to import any maggots.

Er...not all of them. Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers! You would have a big surprise if you were to visit either my local or regional NHS hospital, where everything - buildings, equipment and service - is spanking new and clean. The one thing I've learned after a lifetime of close contact with the NHS, in one capacity or another, is that any generalisation about the NHS is always wrong.

[Da_Shrimp]

Where did/does the NHS get the maggots they use? Did they look in the phone book? Do they scrape them off of something?

Dear lady, I direct you to part of the article:

Among the pioneers of maggot treatment in the UK is ZooBiotic Ltd, one of the first profitable spin-off companies formed from an NHS trust — in this case the Bro Morgannwg Trust’s biosurgical research unit at the Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend. ZooBiotic farms maggots from the sterilised eggs of the common greenbottle, Lucila sericata. Its brand of sterile maggots, marketed as LarvE, was accepted for use by the NHS in 2004 and the company now supplies them to 3,800 hospitals in the UK.

Maggots are also used in other European countries, including Belgium and Poland as mentioned in the article.

And I read that there's an increasing number of women dying in child birth under NHS.

I don't know about this, but as my wife gave birth 9 weeks ago in an NHS hospital, I can certainly speak from VERY recent experience. The Maternity Unit was wonderful, sparklingly clean and offering a range of services experiences including water birth and aromatherapy massage during the early stages of labour. We were looked after by the most marvellous young midwife, who was excellent, and my wife received absolutly outstanding care during a difficult 17-hour labour. My wife and our new son had to stay in hospital for 3 days and she was in a small ward with only 3 other mothers in a bed next to the window with a view out over a lake. Agian, she received excellent care along wiht advice on breast feeding and babycare.

100% thumbs up for the NHS from me on this experience, at least!

[stockpirate]

It is actually a very old treatment that was in use before antibotics came inot use, and is now be reintroduced.

There are actually places in the US that use this method also.

[libstripper]

Actually, this one of the few times that British health cre has a good idea. Sanitary maggots do a beter job of debriding wounds than any other procedure. The Brits deserve credit for this one.

[Popocatapetl]

Quite right! Dermestid beetles are used for bone cleaning. I guess I thought of maggots because of their long association with cleaning decrepit wounds as far back as the US Civil War.

However, in reducing cadavers, you would probably have to use several insects to be both fast and thorough:

"Blowflies and other detritivores are attracted by the odour of decomposition, and as the smell changes during the decomposition process so does the species of invertebrate that is attracted. Therefore, species that are attracted to ‘fresh corpses’ are often different to those that are attracted to corpses in an advanced state of decay. Blowflies do not lay their eggs on corpses once these have passed a certain state of decomposition or they have become dry or mummified. By contrast, dermestid beetles do not colonize corpses until these have started to dry out."

[Slings and Arrows]

Actually, leeches are a commonly-used therapy today.

http://www.webmd.com/news/20040628/leeches-cleared-for-medical-use-by-fda
http://arthritis.webmd.com/news/20031103/knee-pain-from-arthritis-try-leeches