14 DAY TRIAL // Let's face it, maggots are pretty darn disgusting and nobody in their right mind would ever agree to sharing their body with a small army of such creepy crawlers.
Still, it looks like it's maggots that need be credited with saving the life of Pham Quang Lanh, a 28-year-old man in Vietnam. Or so his doctors say.
The maggots kept a severe infection from spreading
About three years ago, a falling iron bar hit Pham Quang Lanh over the head and badly fractured his skull. The man was rushed into surgery and medical experts placed a titanium plate under his skin right at the side of the injury.
The titanium plate was supposed to replace the part of the man's skull that was damaged when the falling iron bar landed on his head. In time, however, the site of the surgery became infected.
Before the young man even had a chance to figure out that something was off, maggots set up camp inside his head, right under the skin, and got busy eating away at the dead and infected tissue.
Because of the metal plate, however, the maggots found it impossible to move deeper inside the man's head and snack on his brain. Instead, they were forced to stick to their diet of dead tissue.
The parasites were eventually removed by doctors
About a year ago, the man started experiencing headaches and noticed that his head wound was badly swollen. At first, he was reluctant to seek medical help, simply because he feared the cost of another surgical intervention.
“I didn’t want to go to hospital again because I hoped it would heal on its own,” the man said in an interview, as cited by Metro. “I just couldn’t afford another medical bill,” Pham Quang Lanh added.
When he finally decided to seek help, he was shocked to find that he had maggots living under his skin and feeding on the dead tissue around an infection at the site of his previous surgery.
Medical experts had to operate on him once more. They treated the man's infection and also made sure to remove whatever maggots were living under his skin. The 28-year-old now feels much better and is expected to make a full recovery.