A Review on Maggot Therapy by Lucilia Sericata Larvae on Infectious Wounds

Abstract

Introduction: The use of fly larvae has been utilized to heal wounds for centuries. With the advent of antibiotics and new surgical procedures, the application of this method has diminished. With the increase in the prevalence of chronic wounds and emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, it is important to provide a solution that can overcome these problems and treat infectious wounds. This review illustrates the effect of L. sericata on the infectious wound healing and the side effects as well as how to employ the method with these larvae.

Material and Methods: In this study a narrative review was carried out. The corpus was collected by searching the keywords of Lucilia sericata, Phanicia sericata, maggot therapy in the databases of PubMed, Scopus, SID, Google Scholar search engine. The studied articles were those which has been published on the interaction between the maggot therapy and Lucilia sericata until 2019.

Results: L. sericata larvae only deal with dead, necrotic tissue and do not harm healthy tissue and prevent the bacterial growth by secreting ammonia and also reduce the number of bacteria on the wound by eating them. Furthermore, by moving the larvae and producing cytokines, it increases the blood circulation in the affected area and the diapedesis of phagocytes increases and wound healing facilitates.

Conclusion: Due to wound healing and disinfection of L. sericata larvae, with considering the conditions of wound, we could use maggot therapy instead of the other treatment methods because of high efficiency and safety and low complications and costs.