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In July 2005, a 58-page memo went out to the General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel of the Medical Devices Advisory Committee of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While there's nothing unusual about enormous memos coming from government bodies, the subject of this memo was interesting – they're looking to classify the following medical devices: topical wound dressings that contain drugs and/or biologics, tissue expanders, bone wax, medicinal maggots, and medicinal leeches! So while they debate which classification these should have, here's some trivia on the last two items: Maggots• Historically, military
surgeons – such as Napoleon's Surgeon-in-Chief,
Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey – noted that soldiers
whose wounds were infested by maggots did better
(and had a much lower mortality rate) than soldiers
whose wounds weren't infested.
• In the 1930s, Lederle
Corporation produced and sold maggots in the United
States for $5 per 1,000. With the rise of antibiotics,
their use virtually ceased.
• However, since 1995,
the number of practitioners using maggot therapy
has increased to more than 2,000 worldwide.
• It's not just any maggot
that will suffice, you need sterile greenbottle blowfly
larvae, which eat only dead tissue.
• Maggot therapy works
by three main actions: debridement (or liquefaction
of necrotic tissue), disinfection, and hastened wound
healing.
• In January 2004, the
FDA approved the medical
maggots of Ronald A. Sherman, MD, MSc, DTM&H,
of the University of California, Irvine, to be marketed
as a medical "device."
• For more information,
see the Maggot
Therapy Project home page, operated by Dr.
Sherman. Leeches• It's believed that medicinal
leeches were used for the first time about 2,500–3,000
years ago in India.
• Physicians in medieval
England were known as leeches.
• Leeches have 32 brains.
• Leeches can consume up
to five times their own body weight in blood.
• The UK-based company,
Biopharm
Leeches, provides leeches for 29 countries.
• The leech species, Hirudo
medicinalis, is the type most commonly used
in plastic and reconstructive surgery.
• Leech bites are painless,
because they include a local anesthetic as well as
an anticoagulant (hirudin) and a local vasodilator.
The bite produces a small bleeding wound that mimics
venous circulation in areas where circulation is
impaired. In the case of grafts, the artificial circulation
gives the graft time to re-establish its own circulation,
normally within 3 to 5 days.
• In June 2004, the FDA
approved
medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) for
marketing as an unclassified medical "device." Also see our article on Creepy-Crawly Therapies! Discuss This ArticleHave something you'd like to say? Tell us what you think! Read and post comments for this article. Like this article? Read more! Browse our archive of 1,086 articles. Also, see our master index of all MedHunters articles! Find a JobChoose your career: MedHunters is the world's biggest healthcare job board. Our job directory has 17,365 jobs with 2,445 hospitals and other direct employers. We want you to find your next job on MedHunters. Need Help? Call us at 1-888-884-8242, email us at info@medhunters.com or sign up now. Have an article or story for MedHunters? Email us today at submissions@medhunters.com. |
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