DorlandHealth

With a long and effective history in wound care, maggot therapy may be headed for a revival. The American Medical Association and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently issued coding guidelines for the use of maggots as a medicinal technique. Though it may sound unconventional, maggot therapy — which utilizes specially prepared fly larvae to treat chronic wounds — dates back hundreds of years. While there is evidence of the use of maggots as wound treatment
during the time of Napoleon, maggot therapy as a formalized discipline was pioneered by Dr. William S. Baer, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, during World War I. Today, maggots are used to debride wounds to make way for new tissue growth. Medicinal maggots save approximately 40-50 percent of limbs scheduled for amputation, according to the BioTherapeutics, Education & Research Foundation, potentially saving thousands in medical, surgical and hospital costs.