NY Podiatrist Uses Maggots to Heal Diabetic Ulcers
Dr. Ravi Kamble, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based podiatrist who specializes in wound care, first got interested in maggots as a child. His father, a general surgeon, would tell him how poor people in India often had wounds infested with the larvae. "He would tell me as an aside that by removing the maggots you were actually doing a disservice to the person because maggots actually helped clean the wound. That fact always stuck in my head," Kamble says.
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Dr. Ravi Kamble |
During medical school, the young Kamble even proposed a research project using maggot therapy -- and "was laughed out of the room" by his professor.Then, late in 2005, Kamble treated Ramon Rivera, a 54-year-old diabetic with a serious foot ulcer -- gangrenous, with a severe infection reaching down to his bone. "I was consulted late in the process, so everyone was already assuming below-the-knee amputation," Kamble says. The proposed cut line was already drawn on Rivera's leg.
About 500 sterile fly larvae were placed directly on the wound and then covered. They were removed a few days later after they'd fed on the dead tissue, then new maggots applied. The therapy worked. "Before treatment, you could see all the way down to the bone. Now he has tissue forming over it," Kamble says. Tissue, according to the textbooks, is not meant to regrow over exposed bone. "It shows you that textbooks are never completely correct," Kamble says.
Source: Karen Dente, New York Times, 9/10/07
