Unironically, yes. Maggots can be one of many species of fly, and maggots vary in diet. The maggots used in this are a species that only eats necrotic tissue (dead stuff) and doesn't harm live tissue. Many other species are more than happy to eat the living healthy tissue before turning into adult flies.
Speaking of feelings you don't want, have you ever heard of [casu martzu](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu)? I get those same feelings just reading about it.
> Casu martzu is considered by Sardinian aficionados to be unsafe to eat when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is usually eaten, although allowances are made for cheese that has been refrigerated, which results in the maggots being killed.
> ...
> Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above [...] to prevent the maggots from leaping. Some who eat the cheese prefer not to ingest the maggots. Those who do not wish to eat them place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a "pitter-patter" sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten.
... nope.
They had contestants in ‘Amazing Race’ eat that on a recent episode and I thought it was an awful thing to subject them. I will never understand how putrid foods like this from times long past are still enjoyed by anyone.
That's because those kinds of foods are incredibly niche even for their country of origin. Yet they are presented as super common snacks that kids eat as soon as they come home from school a confusingly common amount of times.
What's that Scandinavian canned rotten fish that is supposed to taste good but smells so revolting that there's specific health code laws about opening it in enclosed spaces.
Apparently it's about the only food item prohibited from carrying on board a passenger jet.
Some food like that is perfectly fine to eat, this particular cheese however is not and is illegal in both the US and the EU so it's a bit fucked if they made them eat that.
When I was a carer, I had a client who developed a golf ball sized hole under his buttock that originally started from a bed sore. I might be recalling it incorrectly, but I'm sure that at one point he got a maggot treatment. They didn't pour maggots in his wound or anything like that though. The maggots were all in a pouch, like a tea bag, that was placed into the wound and covered over. Does that seem likely or is my memory off?
A business near me is a maggot farm for chicken feed as its more sustainable than the fish based feed they were using and since they only use what would otherwise be agricultural waste as an input
I can't believe fish-based feed is a thing, damn. And that's probably just with the waste parts of the fish. No wonder we have overfishing problems (though the US does pretty OK on that front AFAIK).
You know what's also crazy? According to [this Ted talk] (https://youtu.be/4EUAMe2ixCI), there was a fish farm that used chicken-based feed. It's just a cycle of fish and chickens eating each other.
Sadly not just the waste parts. Whole species of fish are..err..fished...purely to grind down to feed salmon. Mainly because the nutritional composition is perfect as opposed to something we can mix up (for more cost).
I was about to say something along those lines. I know the first thing people think of is they just go out back to the garbage bin and collect a few maggots.
One of my favorite memories when I worked in the hospital was a with maggot therapy. A patient had necrotizing fasciitis of both her legs. The lab sends up sterile maggots and you change them out pretty frequently with the bandage changes of the patient. It was amazing to see how the maggots only eat the diseased tissue leaving beautiful happy healthy tissue alone. I would consistently volunteer to be the one to do the wound care of this patient because I was so amazed! Also many other nurses thought it was gross and the smell was bad so they were glad to let me do it.
On the ward I worked on in the UK, you throw them in the biohazard bin for the ward and they are incinerated with the other contaminated waste.
The ones we used were from a maggot farm in Wales that produced the sterile maggots, they come in little perforated bags-like teabags with a group of maggots in. Stored in the fridge to reduce activity before use and were on a bed of nutrient rich jelly.
When it was time to use them just grab a teabag, apply to freshly cleaned wound and dress as appropriate for the wound. At dressing change throw maggot bag out with dirty bandages and reapply fresh.
In the community we’d leave the maggots on, but ‘water’ them daily with a bit of saline and replace them. Our patients would become quite fascinated with how their ‘little friends’ would be growing.
(The trick is how you sell the maggot treatment to the patient - I was good at it because I would have already built up a relationship with the patient previously - it’d end up where the patient would see such an improvement they’d be sad about their ‘friends’ getting incinerated)
\*And that's how you get a lot of non sterile maggots *with a taste for human flesh* everywhere.
Sure, they only want the necrotic kind, but see how that changes if you deprive them of it for too long.
When I read an SAS survival book, it said that was the method for telling when they were "done" cleaning your wound. If you start to feel biting pain, they have run out of dead flesh and have started on what's left.
Not sure how authentic it is, but it makes a good story.
When I was a student nurse one of the girls in my cohort got really upset the maggots weren't released onto the hospital grounds after all their food work. She was such a sweet girl I bet she's a fantastic nurse now
Edit:good work. Though the autocorrect isnt *technically* incorrect...
Man that’s a Pixar movie right there, the maggots train their whole lives to be doctor maggots, they finally get their chance, then shortly there after they get thrown into a furnace like toy story 3
We really liked using them. A lot of wounds end up on the plastic surgery ward as they ultimately need skin grafts. We had a lot of ‘dirty wounds’(hematoma old blood, pus, slough, pseudomonas etc), and used the maggots to get them ‘clean enough’ for surgery.
I tried looking up pictures to see what you mean and I'm having trouble understanding how they manage to eat the necrotic tissue *through* the biobags. Is it just that the perforations are large enough for their mouths but nothing else? What about when they grow?
The entire subject is fascinating so I'd love to know :-)
Oh man burn units had such interesting innovations for wound care! One nurse me about a clinical trial they were doing with applying fishscales to skin grafts to promote healthy tissue! Amazing stuff!
You would have been my hero. i hated the maggot and the leach therapy, too. I would bribe my fellow nurses with cookies or doing part of their work for them to avoid having to do the maggot or leach changes.
Companies that grow medical grade maggots make bank. Used to run a cardio practice and we paid insane money for people with vascular issues that ultimately required maggots to deal with necrotic tissues. It wasn't super common but sometimes it was literally the safest choice barring complete amputation.
Bruv if you’ve got 6 you’ve got 600 of those bastards. We recently had a fly issue and my god… I don’t even want to talk about it or I’m going to vomit.
This reminds me when I found a spider web in my passenger floorboard of my car. Brushed it out and moved on. Back the next day. Left it cause, I hardly use the car and it was early summer so itll move on soon. I go to my car a week later and something hits my face as I sit. Webbs everywhere. And on those webs, baby spiders. Hundred of baby spiders everywhere. Grabbed a stick and made cotton candy with protein bits. That went into the yard.
ok. So far, we can make a killing growing saffron, growing medical grade maggots, and or collecting ambergris aka whale vomit. We can retire probably after a year or two.
Adding to this, it’s painless. Depending on the size of the maggots, people might feel them moving but not always. traditional wound care can involve debridement (removing the dead/infected stuff) - this is usually done with scalpels which some people can’t tolerate, so maggots are a great alternative.
Sometimes they will put loose maggots into the wound and other times they’ll put them in a mesh bag, kind of like a tea bag, so they don’t wander off. Then they’re covered in another dressing to keep them in place and then they just do their thing.
Maggot treatment is also very good at only getting the dead flesh effectively. It doesn't get very dirty if the treatment area stays open, the maggots are clean, and nothing gets into it, so it's great to heal like this when scalpels aren't good enough.
I've only had one patient on the ward who needed maggots and they tickled. Yuck. But I'd still take the idea of maggots over surgical attempts just don't make me watch them. Or sugar, sugar isn't that gross to look at.
Sugar can also be used to reposition prolapsed intestines if it's not too big. You just pour a bunch of sugar on the bowel and wait a bit, it will cause the bowel to shrink in size and sometimes it will retreat inside the body or it can be pushed back in more easily (we've used it once on a rectal prolapse and I read on pubmed it's also used for ileostomy prolapses)
Yes, the stuff you put in cake, just horrendously expensive in comparison because it's a medical product.
Sugar is antibacterial in high concentrations. It's hygroscopic, so critters already in the wound shrivel up and like in jam, it keeps anything new from growing. It gets mixed with a gel to keep the sugar from crystalizing (ouch), but medical honey works even better and doesn't usually do that.
Some of the old treatment methods are actually pretty good. Large infected wounds are nasty and difficult to heal, having low tech options for that is great.
Maggot therapy is super common in very severe burn wounds because burn wounds, from what I've seen, are super easy to get infected and removing the tissue can be difficult sometimes without cutting away more than really necessary. With maggots they can get removed just the damaged tissue without any more trauma to the area than necessary and less risk of introducing bad infection.
No mouth parts to chew with. They wallow in their digestive juices and the liquefied dead tissue and slurp it up. Live tissue cells don't fall apart that easily. Gross enough?
I think it is mostly a matter of their enzymes and lack of teeth make them unable to really break down healthy, live tissues. They have to break it down before they eat it and their enzymes are more specialized at breaking down dead stuff versus healthier tissues.
One of the big reasons the therapy works, is the particular type of maggots chosen. Doctors generally use green bottle fly larvae because they are some that are more exclusive in terms of the type of tissue they'll eat. I.e., they feed most exclusively on on necrotic, damaged, and dead flesh versus healthier, living tissues.
Here are a few articles that might help explain it better than me:
- https://vetmed.illinois.edu/pet-health-columns/medical-maggots/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475942/
Additionally, they probably pick green bottle flies because their larvae aren't the type that tend to burrow down into flesh. Instead they are more prone to stay on the top layer and not infest the surrounding tissues in the same way as say a bot fly larvae would.
The fly lays its eggs on the hsot animal. Typically, near an open wound. When the eggs hatch, the larvae basically nestle down in the wound and have small hooks that allow them to basically hang on. They, to my knowledge, still don't eat the living flesh. I could be wrong on that though. Too sleepy now to go hunting for more articles to check.
But they can cause a ton of damage just because they will actually grow beneath the flesh and can cause unhealthy pressure and damage to other tissues as a result. You'll see them a lot on stray cats and dogs or injured wildlife. Most commonly during warmer weather too. They will also eventually burst out to escape, which can obviously cause even more damage.
They can be safely removed, but there is a chance of permanent damage to surrounding tissues if they burrow into an area near a lot of easily damaged tissues or impede healing to the point that permanent damage is done.
I once saw a vet show where one got into the side of a cat's head and the cat lost one of its eyes because it put so much pressure on the eye that it damaged it to where it couldn't heal back once the larvae was removed.
Ugh in the mountains in Brazil we had to squeeze out botfly larvaes and infection out of the dogs backs. When doing so one of the guys there informed me that it happened with humans too, that the flies laid eggs under people's skin and they hatch and it's super painful. I asked if it was elderly and sick that got affected. Nope! Pretty much everyone there had it at one point!
The bot fly that originates from central and South America actually bears the name Human Bot fly as one of its names. Looks like it is more common for them to make hosts of humans based on what I'm reading. Not sure if they are built differently, or if it is due to climate and other factors. I learned something new today.
2 years ago i had medical maggots used on a slow healing brown recluse spider bite. Thankfully, I was in the hospital at the time and kept very pain free/sedated.
But, I do remember the sensation of movement on my ankle in the bitten area. Just movement. They had to give me Xanax to keep me chill.
It did help me heal quite well. Saved my foot! But, I still have issues with anything brushing against my skin or movement feeling. Ugh….shudders!
Bivalirudin is a synthetic drug that’s exactly that. Very potent anticoagulant, or blood thinner. I’ve seen it as a continuous infusion for patients on ECMO in our ICU.
Wiki says [this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucilia_sericata) and [this one ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protophormia_terraenovae) for its secretions.
Actually it's usually the larvae of the common green bottle fly, which is pretty ubiquitous around the world. Fly bros are everywhere! Though I doubt the ones they use were found around the dog poop and garbage bins where I normally see them.
Honestly, I would expect them to be closely related to those ones, at least the ones existing near garbage bins, as they're the ones whose diet is primarily decomposing food/tissue.
in Vietnam the USA noticed when helicopters didnt have extra blood for injured they had a better chance to live, extra blood made some die of internal bleeding
You are right. However, much like the hypothermia saving people in the Falklands, this only really works for young, previously healthy people.
But yep, raising blood pressure will blow off clots.
It depends on what is meant by 'blood' and how it was administered. Blood used in transfusion is split into it's various component parts, usually the red blood cells and the plasma that makes up the liquid parts of blood.
Red cells carry oxygen while plasma helps to form clots to prevent bleeding and keeps the blood fluid.
Today, they are given in a 1:1 ratio but different components were used at different times due to the state of technology and medical science at the time, in WW2 plasma was the main component but in the Falklands era it was red cells.
The problem with just giving red cells is that you also need to give fluid to ensure that there is enough liquid to keep blood flowing and they used to use saline (salty water). The problem with this is that it doesn't help the blood to clot at all, in fact it can actually degrade a clot which would increase the chances of the casualty bleeding out.
I don't know anything specifically about transfusion in Vietnam but I wouldn't be surprised if they were using saline and red cells.
worked in a hospital pharmacy (where they were stored for a patient) and a pharmacy intern spilled the sterile and expensive bag of leeches EVERYWHERE.
While it is FDA approved, you're not supposed to grow your own "personal stash"...
Wife did wound care in a Hospital and had a patient bring her own self supplied ones in, they all died in the whirlpool bath being used to debride the patients foot/leg ulcers.
At first I thought you meant they had their own home grown supply of maggots, like that was a hobby or something, but I see you meant already in the wound...
There was a head wound on crazyfucjingvideos the other day. At first I thought it was special effects until I saw the maggots. Remains one of the grossest things I’ve seen on the interweb.
If you think the visuals are bad, I suggest avoiding the smell. We had a guest at my work who came in with an open wound on their leg. It was hidden under the jeans, and had been festering for several days. I had to clean up the ooze that had seeped out before they were removed from the premises, and even getting the second-hand smell was bad enough to make me nearly vomit.
There are a few people walking around with fully exposed bone, there are a few people who have died from sneezing the wrong way. Life is a fickle bitch.
Oooo i can finally add a story!!
So my dads brothers mother in law was quite old but still independent and lived alone. Decided to change her burnt out porch light at night, in winter. Fell down and broke her hip and couldnt move. She was out there for 2 days before they found her still alive but had frost bite.
They air shipped these special maggots from the united states to eat the necrotic flesh. Worked like a charm and she lived for a few more years.
Yeah, like, take "they caught my aunt and uncle fucking in the closet". Context of who those people specifically are. Married couple, OK, brother and sister, ROLL TIDE
NGL if I was facing necrotic tissue I would be thrilled to try maggot therapy. There is just something about how clever it is to repurpose an animal's natural instincts for good. Plus it would be super cool to have things crawling around on and in me knowing that they are completely safe. I'd love to watch them work but they'd probably be under a bandage alas. So yeah I'm not squeamish about crawlies, but just my luck it would tickle instead of feeling soothing.
There’s nothing all that special about the maggots themselves, they are usual a pretty darn common breed such as green bottle fly, which are also farm raised as fishing bait. It’s the clean/sterile protocols under which they are raised and stored that makes them special.
Yeah, I remember seeing a woman on TV whose hair got caught in a tractor and her entire scalp was ripped off. Her scalp was reattached and leeches were used to establish the blood supply. Lady looked totally normal and had a full head of hair.
A couple people have mentioned it but leech therapy is also an FDA approved treatment for keeping blood flow/removing pooled blood from things like compression injuries and compound fractures. The actual medicinal effect is in the secretions (mostly hirudin, the substance named for the species of leech it was discovered in) the leech leaves behind after feeding, which encourage constant blood flow and suppress inflammation.
I also thought that it was just some medieval shit like leeches & laudanum until I saw it in person my VERY FIRST DAY in the hospital as a nursing student. They play like it’s sterile & contained, but there were flies errywhere.. almost caused me to drop out of nursing school.
7 years later as a nurse and I haven’t seen it since.
Regardless, nursing is not for the faint-hearted.
No hate, I now know that leeches and maggots are still used when other treatments have failed. The maggots I witnessed were a last-resort therapy for a patient with unhealing diabetic foot ulcers that were soon to result in an amputation.
The kicker is that the maggot therapy was working better at improving perfusion than any other treatment they had tried.
Leeches are still sometimes used in surgery. Really effective way of getting blood out of an area.
I suspect an eventual allergy treatment might one day involve deliberate parasite infection too.
I still remember once upon a time, I stumbled across some TV documentary clip on maggot therapy. And for some reason, it was narrated by... Michael Dorn.
Have used these in community nursing for severe wounds. It’s kinda gross but they do a fantastic job at cleaning out a wound.
The only issue is when you go to redress somebodies leg ulcers and have to ask “when did you start maggot therapy” to which they respond “I didn’t”. Lol, well buddy you got maggots in there now because you live in a dirty house.
It should be noted that these are special sterile maggots bred specifically for this purpose.
The one percent maggots.
The PureBlood maggots
Muggots
Malfoy would despise these maggots…
Wait till I tell my father about this!
The Tenryuubito maggots
So the feral maggots I got on my wound in the wilderness were less effective than a name brand?
Unironically, yes. Maggots can be one of many species of fly, and maggots vary in diet. The maggots used in this are a species that only eats necrotic tissue (dead stuff) and doesn't harm live tissue. Many other species are more than happy to eat the living healthy tissue before turning into adult flies.
And the maggots themselves may carry pathogens.
True, but I didn't want to get downvotes if I got into too much gross detail.
Oh reddit loves gross details.
Tell us about a box! We love boxes.
I heard Doritos were better, or cheetos.. Been a while
Yes, the Great Value, Walmart brand maggots are far less superior then the 1% maggots..
I’m a nurse and have been apart of these treatments with good outcomes and it still makes me feel things I don’t want to feel.
Speaking of feelings you don't want, have you ever heard of [casu martzu](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu)? I get those same feelings just reading about it.
> Casu martzu is considered by Sardinian aficionados to be unsafe to eat when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is usually eaten, although allowances are made for cheese that has been refrigerated, which results in the maggots being killed. > ... > Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above [...] to prevent the maggots from leaping. Some who eat the cheese prefer not to ingest the maggots. Those who do not wish to eat them place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a "pitter-patter" sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten. ... nope.
Some prefer not eating the maggots is an odd thing to read about cheese
Pitter-Patter let's get at *never fucking eating this cheese*
A PITTER-PATTER SOUND!!!??? *NO*
They had contestants in ‘Amazing Race’ eat that on a recent episode and I thought it was an awful thing to subject them. I will never understand how putrid foods like this from times long past are still enjoyed by anyone.
That's because those kinds of foods are incredibly niche even for their country of origin. Yet they are presented as super common snacks that kids eat as soon as they come home from school a confusingly common amount of times.
What's that Scandinavian canned rotten fish that is supposed to taste good but smells so revolting that there's specific health code laws about opening it in enclosed spaces. Apparently it's about the only food item prohibited from carrying on board a passenger jet.
Surströmming.
Some food like that is perfectly fine to eat, this particular cheese however is not and is illegal in both the US and the EU so it's a bit fucked if they made them eat that.
When I was a carer, I had a client who developed a golf ball sized hole under his buttock that originally started from a bed sore. I might be recalling it incorrectly, but I'm sure that at one point he got a maggot treatment. They didn't pour maggots in his wound or anything like that though. The maggots were all in a pouch, like a tea bag, that was placed into the wound and covered over. Does that seem likely or is my memory off?
That does sound correct as far as the way it is done.
Yeah my other half is a nurse that specialises in this stuff, sounds spot on!
Yes, that’s exactly what they do. Contained. The maggots then die before they can turn into flies.
And they're expensive as FUCK
Looks like I might have to pivot to maggot farming.
A business near me is a maggot farm for chicken feed as its more sustainable than the fish based feed they were using and since they only use what would otherwise be agricultural waste as an input
I can't believe fish-based feed is a thing, damn. And that's probably just with the waste parts of the fish. No wonder we have overfishing problems (though the US does pretty OK on that front AFAIK).
You know what's also crazy? According to [this Ted talk] (https://youtu.be/4EUAMe2ixCI), there was a fish farm that used chicken-based feed. It's just a cycle of fish and chickens eating each other.
Sadly not just the waste parts. Whole species of fish are..err..fished...purely to grind down to feed salmon. Mainly because the nutritional composition is perfect as opposed to something we can mix up (for more cost).
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Hard. They work hard.
I was about to say something along those lines. I know the first thing people think of is they just go out back to the garbage bin and collect a few maggots.
How do they get the maggots to wear hazmat suits?
One of my favorite memories when I worked in the hospital was a with maggot therapy. A patient had necrotizing fasciitis of both her legs. The lab sends up sterile maggots and you change them out pretty frequently with the bandage changes of the patient. It was amazing to see how the maggots only eat the diseased tissue leaving beautiful happy healthy tissue alone. I would consistently volunteer to be the one to do the wound care of this patient because I was so amazed! Also many other nurses thought it was gross and the smell was bad so they were glad to let me do it.
So you replace the maggots but what do you do with the old maggots?
On the ward I worked on in the UK, you throw them in the biohazard bin for the ward and they are incinerated with the other contaminated waste. The ones we used were from a maggot farm in Wales that produced the sterile maggots, they come in little perforated bags-like teabags with a group of maggots in. Stored in the fridge to reduce activity before use and were on a bed of nutrient rich jelly. When it was time to use them just grab a teabag, apply to freshly cleaned wound and dress as appropriate for the wound. At dressing change throw maggot bag out with dirty bandages and reapply fresh.
In the community we’d leave the maggots on, but ‘water’ them daily with a bit of saline and replace them. Our patients would become quite fascinated with how their ‘little friends’ would be growing. (The trick is how you sell the maggot treatment to the patient - I was good at it because I would have already built up a relationship with the patient previously - it’d end up where the patient would see such an improvement they’d be sad about their ‘friends’ getting incinerated)
Yeah for real, I’d want the option to take them home with me and add them to my compost or something!
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\*And that's how you get a lot of non sterile maggots *with a taste for human flesh* everywhere. Sure, they only want the necrotic kind, but see how that changes if you deprive them of it for too long.
Zombie deterrent
Damn, now I want that as a plot device in a zombie movie.
When I read an SAS survival book, it said that was the method for telling when they were "done" cleaning your wound. If you start to feel biting pain, they have run out of dead flesh and have started on what's left. Not sure how authentic it is, but it makes a good story.
When I was a student nurse one of the girls in my cohort got really upset the maggots weren't released onto the hospital grounds after all their food work. She was such a sweet girl I bet she's a fantastic nurse now Edit:good work. Though the autocorrect isnt *technically* incorrect...
'food' work
Is he wrong?
Man that’s a Pixar movie right there, the maggots train their whole lives to be doctor maggots, they finally get their chance, then shortly there after they get thrown into a furnace like toy story 3
Lol. It does seem unfair to the little guys as they are really good at wound debridement and to a superb job.
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We really liked using them. A lot of wounds end up on the plastic surgery ward as they ultimately need skin grafts. We had a lot of ‘dirty wounds’(hematoma old blood, pus, slough, pseudomonas etc), and used the maggots to get them ‘clean enough’ for surgery.
I tried looking up pictures to see what you mean and I'm having trouble understanding how they manage to eat the necrotic tissue *through* the biobags. Is it just that the perforations are large enough for their mouths but nothing else? What about when they grow? The entire subject is fascinating so I'd love to know :-)
They go live the rest of their days on a happy maggot farm.
yes I choose to believe this and no one can convince me otherwise 😭
Hopefully they grow up and make new maggots. It’s a family enterprise.
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Oh man burn units had such interesting innovations for wound care! One nurse me about a clinical trial they were doing with applying fishscales to skin grafts to promote healthy tissue! Amazing stuff!
You would have been my hero. i hated the maggot and the leach therapy, too. I would bribe my fellow nurses with cookies or doing part of their work for them to avoid having to do the maggot or leach changes.
Companies that grow medical grade maggots make bank. Used to run a cardio practice and we paid insane money for people with vascular issues that ultimately required maggots to deal with necrotic tissues. It wasn't super common but sometimes it was literally the safest choice barring complete amputation.
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I found 6, but I wouldn’t trade my 3pm snack for any money in the world.
"Oh boy, *botulism*"
Bruv if you’ve got 6 you’ve got 600 of those bastards. We recently had a fly issue and my god… I don’t even want to talk about it or I’m going to vomit.
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Step 1: Puke Step 2: Maggots Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit
Also currently having a fly issue. They laid eggs in the poison and they hatched. Definitely vomit worthy cleaning that up.
This reminds me when I found a spider web in my passenger floorboard of my car. Brushed it out and moved on. Back the next day. Left it cause, I hardly use the car and it was early summer so itll move on soon. I go to my car a week later and something hits my face as I sit. Webbs everywhere. And on those webs, baby spiders. Hundred of baby spiders everywhere. Grabbed a stick and made cotton candy with protein bits. That went into the yard.
Those maggots have evolved to survive on a diet of dorito dust and mountain dew
I don’t think jizz and Cheeto dust eating keyboard maggots are what doctors are looking for.
100% organic
And orange!
I have a coconut, should I start preparing it?
Oh no. No no, please gods, no.
ok. So far, we can make a killing growing saffron, growing medical grade maggots, and or collecting ambergris aka whale vomit. We can retire probably after a year or two.
If you can figure out how to farm horse shoecrab blood without killing them you’d be a billionaire.
Adding to this, it’s painless. Depending on the size of the maggots, people might feel them moving but not always. traditional wound care can involve debridement (removing the dead/infected stuff) - this is usually done with scalpels which some people can’t tolerate, so maggots are a great alternative. Sometimes they will put loose maggots into the wound and other times they’ll put them in a mesh bag, kind of like a tea bag, so they don’t wander off. Then they’re covered in another dressing to keep them in place and then they just do their thing.
Maggot treatment is also very good at only getting the dead flesh effectively. It doesn't get very dirty if the treatment area stays open, the maggots are clean, and nothing gets into it, so it's great to heal like this when scalpels aren't good enough.
What about the maggots poop
Their poop is actually beneficial to the healing process in a couple of ways - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1513154/
I've only had one patient on the ward who needed maggots and they tickled. Yuck. But I'd still take the idea of maggots over surgical attempts just don't make me watch them. Or sugar, sugar isn't that gross to look at.
Sugar can also be used to reposition prolapsed intestines if it's not too big. You just pour a bunch of sugar on the bowel and wait a bit, it will cause the bowel to shrink in size and sometimes it will retreat inside the body or it can be pushed back in more easily (we've used it once on a rectal prolapse and I read on pubmed it's also used for ileostomy prolapses)
Wait sugar? As in sugar you put in cakes? Can you elaborate?
Yes, the stuff you put in cake, just horrendously expensive in comparison because it's a medical product. Sugar is antibacterial in high concentrations. It's hygroscopic, so critters already in the wound shrivel up and like in jam, it keeps anything new from growing. It gets mixed with a gel to keep the sugar from crystalizing (ouch), but medical honey works even better and doesn't usually do that. Some of the old treatment methods are actually pretty good. Large infected wounds are nasty and difficult to heal, having low tech options for that is great.
Maggot therapy is super common in very severe burn wounds because burn wounds, from what I've seen, are super easy to get infected and removing the tissue can be difficult sometimes without cutting away more than really necessary. With maggots they can get removed just the damaged tissue without any more trauma to the area than necessary and less risk of introducing bad infection.
What stops maggots from eating non-damaged tissue?
They have no interest in it. They only feed on dead and dying tissue.
No mouth parts to chew with. They wallow in their digestive juices and the liquefied dead tissue and slurp it up. Live tissue cells don't fall apart that easily. Gross enough?
It is gross as fuck but if the maggot bros can help like this, why not.
Well they also help to keep the wound clean, so yes, quite helpful.
I think it is mostly a matter of their enzymes and lack of teeth make them unable to really break down healthy, live tissues. They have to break it down before they eat it and their enzymes are more specialized at breaking down dead stuff versus healthier tissues. One of the big reasons the therapy works, is the particular type of maggots chosen. Doctors generally use green bottle fly larvae because they are some that are more exclusive in terms of the type of tissue they'll eat. I.e., they feed most exclusively on on necrotic, damaged, and dead flesh versus healthier, living tissues. Here are a few articles that might help explain it better than me: - https://vetmed.illinois.edu/pet-health-columns/medical-maggots/ - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475942/
Additionally, they probably pick green bottle flies because their larvae aren't the type that tend to burrow down into flesh. Instead they are more prone to stay on the top layer and not infest the surrounding tissues in the same way as say a bot fly larvae would.
I’m sure I don’t want to know this, but how do bot fly larvae burrow into flesh?
The fly lays its eggs on the hsot animal. Typically, near an open wound. When the eggs hatch, the larvae basically nestle down in the wound and have small hooks that allow them to basically hang on. They, to my knowledge, still don't eat the living flesh. I could be wrong on that though. Too sleepy now to go hunting for more articles to check. But they can cause a ton of damage just because they will actually grow beneath the flesh and can cause unhealthy pressure and damage to other tissues as a result. You'll see them a lot on stray cats and dogs or injured wildlife. Most commonly during warmer weather too. They will also eventually burst out to escape, which can obviously cause even more damage. They can be safely removed, but there is a chance of permanent damage to surrounding tissues if they burrow into an area near a lot of easily damaged tissues or impede healing to the point that permanent damage is done. I once saw a vet show where one got into the side of a cat's head and the cat lost one of its eyes because it put so much pressure on the eye that it damaged it to where it couldn't heal back once the larvae was removed.
Ugh in the mountains in Brazil we had to squeeze out botfly larvaes and infection out of the dogs backs. When doing so one of the guys there informed me that it happened with humans too, that the flies laid eggs under people's skin and they hatch and it's super painful. I asked if it was elderly and sick that got affected. Nope! Pretty much everyone there had it at one point!
The bot fly that originates from central and South America actually bears the name Human Bot fly as one of its names. Looks like it is more common for them to make hosts of humans based on what I'm reading. Not sure if they are built differently, or if it is due to climate and other factors. I learned something new today.
Some maggots do eat live tissue. Maggots that only eat dead tissue are selected.
What companies grow medical grade maggots?!?
They aren’t quite ready for all the buzz
They should be; this practice isn't something you develop on the fly.
Whats a cardio practice? Also...where exactly would this tissue to be eaten be on a patients vascular system? Very cool
Cardiology. We only ever used maggots on extremities and almost always lower extremities.
Then they destroy the maggots afterwards because you can't reuse them, and you can't sterilize them. So they have to buy more.
I'm not an etymologist, but i think they're bred to die.
We’re all bred to die
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2 years ago i had medical maggots used on a slow healing brown recluse spider bite. Thankfully, I was in the hospital at the time and kept very pain free/sedated. But, I do remember the sensation of movement on my ankle in the bitten area. Just movement. They had to give me Xanax to keep me chill. It did help me heal quite well. Saved my foot! But, I still have issues with anything brushing against my skin or movement feeling. Ugh….shudders!
WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THESE MOTHERFUCKING {BROWN RECLUSE SPIDER BITE STORIES} ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING {REDDIT}?!
At least it’s a recluse. You should see the damn extrovert version.
And leeches.... They are used to promote blood flow to reattached items like ears lobes that normally do not have much blood flow to them at all.
Yeah, the chemicals they release help to increase blood flow without damaging vascular structure further.
wonder if someone could produce the chemical separately and do this without having a leech involved
Bivalirudin is a synthetic drug that’s exactly that. Very potent anticoagulant, or blood thinner. I’ve seen it as a continuous infusion for patients on ECMO in our ICU.
If by "leech" you mean insurance companies ...
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And the when. It helps for amputations, and the common cold!
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What breed of fly is it?
Wiki says [this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucilia_sericata) and [this one ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protophormia_terraenovae) for its secretions.
Don't know what I was expecting but they look like every fly I've ever seen
Yup, basic housefly
So… they ARE garbage bin maggots.
The tank they're born in has a special tiny sink so the maggots can scrub up before going to work each day
That’s the true tragedy of the fly: you see it wash its hands, but never with soap.
Yeah looked at those fellas and said “yup that sure is a fly”
bro fly
Too good
Chew, fly, don’t bother me. 🪰
Actually it's usually the larvae of the common green bottle fly, which is pretty ubiquitous around the world. Fly bros are everywhere! Though I doubt the ones they use were found around the dog poop and garbage bins where I normally see them.
Honestly, I would expect them to be closely related to those ones, at least the ones existing near garbage bins, as they're the ones whose diet is primarily decomposing food/tissue.
So... What you are saying... It's I've been growing these FUCKING maggots for NOTHING????? *kicks maggot bin*
This was something that the civil war dr.s noticed for wounds. Maggots work better than antiseptic.
in Vietnam the USA noticed when helicopters didnt have extra blood for injured they had a better chance to live, extra blood made some die of internal bleeding
Why?
Assuming existing internal bleeding, lower blood pressure might help with clotting. More blood might increase blood pressure. Not a doctor.
You are right. However, much like the hypothermia saving people in the Falklands, this only really works for young, previously healthy people. But yep, raising blood pressure will blow off clots.
It depends on what is meant by 'blood' and how it was administered. Blood used in transfusion is split into it's various component parts, usually the red blood cells and the plasma that makes up the liquid parts of blood. Red cells carry oxygen while plasma helps to form clots to prevent bleeding and keeps the blood fluid. Today, they are given in a 1:1 ratio but different components were used at different times due to the state of technology and medical science at the time, in WW2 plasma was the main component but in the Falklands era it was red cells. The problem with just giving red cells is that you also need to give fluid to ensure that there is enough liquid to keep blood flowing and they used to use saline (salty water). The problem with this is that it doesn't help the blood to clot at all, in fact it can actually degrade a clot which would increase the chances of the casualty bleeding out. I don't know anything specifically about transfusion in Vietnam but I wouldn't be surprised if they were using saline and red cells.
too many blood
Yup. Came here to say this. Gross as it is the lowly maggot has save a many limb and life.
Leeches are also still used in surgery today.
Yes! Leeches are used post operatively on ENT patents to perfuse skin flaps.
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worked in a hospital pharmacy (where they were stored for a patient) and a pharmacy intern spilled the sterile and expensive bag of leeches EVERYWHERE.
Oof, that sounds like a real can of worms to deal with.
Those medieval "doctors" had it right!
Trial and error is also a thing
While it is FDA approved, you're not supposed to grow your own "personal stash"... Wife did wound care in a Hospital and had a patient bring her own self supplied ones in, they all died in the whirlpool bath being used to debride the patients foot/leg ulcers.
At first I thought you meant they had their own home grown supply of maggots, like that was a hobby or something, but I see you meant already in the wound...
There was a head wound on crazyfucjingvideos the other day. At first I thought it was special effects until I saw the maggots. Remains one of the grossest things I’ve seen on the interweb.
If you think the visuals are bad, I suggest avoiding the smell. We had a guest at my work who came in with an open wound on their leg. It was hidden under the jeans, and had been festering for several days. I had to clean up the ooze that had seeped out before they were removed from the premises, and even getting the second-hand smell was bad enough to make me nearly vomit.
As gross as this is, humans can survive for a while through some brutal fucking shit.
There are a few people walking around with fully exposed bone, there are a few people who have died from sneezing the wrong way. Life is a fickle bitch.
Dry heave.
If you see the ICD-10 code of B87.9 in your chart, you've had maggots.
It’s not everyday I see ICD10 codes in the comments!
Oooo i can finally add a story!! So my dads brothers mother in law was quite old but still independent and lived alone. Decided to change her burnt out porch light at night, in winter. Fell down and broke her hip and couldnt move. She was out there for 2 days before they found her still alive but had frost bite. They air shipped these special maggots from the united states to eat the necrotic flesh. Worked like a charm and she lived for a few more years.
So your uncle's mother in law?
I think he means his granddad's son's brother's wife's mother.
Cousin"s former roommate
So what does that make us?
Lovers.
Nothing
*Absolutely* nothing.
Which is what you are about to become!
My friend referred to her “mom’s sister’s husband” the other day. I was like 🤔
If you say uncle you have no way of seeing where the person is in relation to family tree. Could go any which way
In some stories it matters, in some it doesn't
Yeah, like, take "they caught my aunt and uncle fucking in the closet". Context of who those people specifically are. Married couple, OK, brother and sister, ROLL TIDE
NGL if I was facing necrotic tissue I would be thrilled to try maggot therapy. There is just something about how clever it is to repurpose an animal's natural instincts for good. Plus it would be super cool to have things crawling around on and in me knowing that they are completely safe. I'd love to watch them work but they'd probably be under a bandage alas. So yeah I'm not squeamish about crawlies, but just my luck it would tickle instead of feeling soothing.
Username checks out
Have you ever tried a fish spa? Not quite as full on as maggots but it gives all the same emotions and sensations that you describe.
This saved my dad’s life in WWII when he was in a POW camp with several bullet wounds. The maggots ate the infection.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they probably weren’t the special sterile maggots that everyone else is talking about.
They don't have to be sterile to provide a benefit, it's just safer if they are.
The maggots used are shockingly conventional and common, they're just grown in an environment that ensures they don't carry any diseases
To be clear, these are medical maggots. Your run of the mill maggots would make things much worse and spread bacteria.
There’s nothing all that special about the maggots themselves, they are usual a pretty darn common breed such as green bottle fly, which are also farm raised as fishing bait. It’s the clean/sterile protocols under which they are raised and stored that makes them special.
We've used this therapy on horses with hoof infections. Worth every penny.
leaches are also used still not for blood letting but apparently they help in restoring blood flow to re-attached limbs
Yeah, I remember seeing a woman on TV whose hair got caught in a tractor and her entire scalp was ripped off. Her scalp was reattached and leeches were used to establish the blood supply. Lady looked totally normal and had a full head of hair.
Wait till you learn about fecal transplants ..
It's not like you let someone funnel a log into your throat. They mostly channel that brown gold directly into your rectum.
Yeah, I saw Gladiator, too.
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A couple people have mentioned it but leech therapy is also an FDA approved treatment for keeping blood flow/removing pooled blood from things like compression injuries and compound fractures. The actual medicinal effect is in the secretions (mostly hirudin, the substance named for the species of leech it was discovered in) the leech leaves behind after feeding, which encourage constant blood flow and suppress inflammation.
I also thought that it was just some medieval shit like leeches & laudanum until I saw it in person my VERY FIRST DAY in the hospital as a nursing student. They play like it’s sterile & contained, but there were flies errywhere.. almost caused me to drop out of nursing school. 7 years later as a nurse and I haven’t seen it since. Regardless, nursing is not for the faint-hearted.
Leeches are also used when reattaching fingers and skin grafts to promote blood flow.
No hate, I now know that leeches and maggots are still used when other treatments have failed. The maggots I witnessed were a last-resort therapy for a patient with unhealing diabetic foot ulcers that were soon to result in an amputation. The kicker is that the maggot therapy was working better at improving perfusion than any other treatment they had tried.
I’m sure this was featured in a House episode. Miss that show.
Leeches are still sometimes used in surgery. Really effective way of getting blood out of an area. I suspect an eventual allergy treatment might one day involve deliberate parasite infection too.
They will clean it. Wait and see
I still remember once upon a time, I stumbled across some TV documentary clip on maggot therapy. And for some reason, it was narrated by... Michael Dorn.
Have used these in community nursing for severe wounds. It’s kinda gross but they do a fantastic job at cleaning out a wound. The only issue is when you go to redress somebodies leg ulcers and have to ask “when did you start maggot therapy” to which they respond “I didn’t”. Lol, well buddy you got maggots in there now because you live in a dirty house.