Maggot Therapy (also known as Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT), larval therapy, larva therapy, or larvae therapy), is the intentional introduction by a health care practitioner of live, disinfected maggots (fly larvae) into the non-healing skin and soft tissue wound(s) of a human or animal for the purpose of selectively cleaning out only the necrotic (dead) tissue within a wound in order to promote wound healing.

In the United States, Medical Maggots are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration as a prescription only medical device..

For more information about the topic Maggot therapy, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Maggot — A maggot is the larval stage of the fly life cycle, famous for eating decomposing flesh. Sometimes "maggot" is used to refer to the larval stage of ...  > read more

Larva — A larva is a juvenile form of animal with indirect development, undergoing metamorphosis (for example, insects or amphibians). The larva can look ...  > read more

Fly — As defined by entomologists, a fly (plural flies) is any species of insect of the order Diptera. These typically have one pair of true wings, with ...  > read more

Healing — Healing is the process whereby the cells in the body regenerate and repair to reduce the size of a damaged or necrotic area. Healing incorporates ...  > read more

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Maggot Therapy Linked With Reduced Post-Operative Wound Infections (September 16, 2004) — Maggots aren’t high on most people’s favorite-animals list. But maggots--specifically, the larvae of the green blowfly, Phaenicia sericata--can be helpful for the very reason they ...  > read more

New Wound Dressing May Lead To Maggot Therapy Without The Maggots (October 9, 2006) — Scientists in the United Kingdom have developed a new wound dressing that could bring the benefits of maggot therapy to patients without putting live Greenbottle fly (blowfly) larvae into non-healing ...  > read more

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Maggots Rid Patients Of Antibiotic-resistant Infection, MRSA (May 5, 2007) — Medical researchers are ridding diabetic patients of the superbug MRSA -- by treating their foot ulcers with maggots. The scientists used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetic patients whose ...  > read more

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