Maggot Therapy in Iran is Saving Lives and Limbs

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It was an honor and a privilege to be invited to participate in this project: assessing the impact of maggot therapy on wound care in the Islamic Republic of Iran. For several years, Dr. Mirabzadeh and his team had been using maggot therapy to treat chronic non-healing wounds of patients who had failed multiple medical and surgical attempts to close their wounds. All of the patients had bone infections (osteomyelitis), and many were referred for amputation. The results of that work, after review and analysis by our team at the BTER Foundation, demonstrated that all of the wounds were healed after a course of maggot debridement. Not a single limb in this series required amputation, even though many of the wounds were initially felt to be unsalvageable. Another valuable lesson that was clearly demonstrated in this case series was that even when maggot therapy was administered in rural areas by minimally trained family members, wounds healed despite failing to do so when previously cared for by highly skilled professionals using advanced wound care technologies in a modern tertiary care center in Tehran. To this day, looking at the "before" and "after" photographs fills me with a sense of awe and inspiration.

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