Grub up: Maggot care for East Lancashire patients

Specialist firm Zoobiotics, which is sponsored by the NHS, is now working in Lancashire to train nurses in using the tiny grubs to clean away dead and infected tissue, and slash months off healing times.

Anne Pickford, a clinical nurse advisor with the firm, works throughout the North West, and has been giving training on the methods to staff in NHS East Lancashire and NHS Blackburn with Darwen’s specialist wound care teams.

She said that maggots had been used for centuries to aid healing, but fell out of fashion after antibiotics became widely available in the 1940s. It is only in the last few years that their value has been rediscovered.

The 54-year-old mother-of-two, who has been a nurse for more than 30 years, said: “Some people aren’t too keen at first, and that goes for both patients and nurses, but the modern dressings mean the actual maggots, which are grown in sterile conditions in the Zoobiotics lab, are in a bag over the wound and you can’t actually see them.

“Conventional dressings can often take months to get the wound clean, and even then leave areas that are still weeping, but the maggots do the job with just a couple of dressings, each one lasting up to five days.

“Getting rid of all the nasty stuff quickly and effectively means the wound can get to work on healing much quicker, meaning fewer days in hospital, less expense, less time off work, and even less chance of developing a serious infection like MRSA.

“Patients are always very impressed - having an open wound is painful and uncomfortable, affecting people both physically and mentally, but the results from the maggots are fantastic.

“Some of the older patients even remember them being used when they were children.

“People in East Lancashire have been really receptive to the use of the maggots.

"They really are a brilliant, natural way to get the job done and I hope they will be used more and more in the area now I am working with the NHS there.”