Leeches return to medicine

Press, 18 March 1982, Page 9

Leeches return to medicine

NZPA London The leech, the humble annelid worm that in times past was used to suck blood as a method of medical treatment, and was even applied to people who wanted to lose weight is back in favour as a way of cleaning up tissue after delicate microsurgery operations. Lance Sully, a plastic surgeon at Nottingham City Hospital, has taken delivery of 20 leeches which so far have been used successfully 7 on two patients. Mr. Sully is said to have got the idea for applying leeches when he visited France.

The British leech is nowhere in the running — or the sucking — when it comes to modern medical applications.

Your truly pedigree bloodsucker is of either Belgian or Hungarian stock. Those supplied to the hos-

pital by a south England firm are thought to be Hungarian. Once they have been thoroughly fed. leeches proceed to reproduce themselves — they are hermaphroditic — and can last for at least a year without any further feeding. The hospital’s principal pharmacist. John Gilbey. says that patients have no objections to leeches being applied once they know it can mean the difference between a skin graft failing or succeeding. The leeches, he explains, get rid of excess blood without the risk of clotting — something injections and creams cannot always do. It is. he says, a new application of an old technique.

The leech can be used repeatedly, but at Nottingham they are aware of the risk of cross-infection and this is not done.