The use of leeches in medical treatment. Once used as an
almost universal cure, leeches were largely abandoned by medicine but in the second
half of the 20th century refound a role. That role is largely in plastic and reconstructive
surgery. Leeches can assist, for example, in the reattachment of severed body parts
such as a finger, hand, toe, leg, ear, nose or the scalp.
T he surgeon usually has little difficult connecting the two ends of small arteries,
since arteries are thick-walled and relatively simple to suture. However, veins
are thin-walled, fragile, and difficult to suture. The surgeon may thus get blood
flowing in the reattached arteries but not in the veins. With the venous circulation
severely compromised, the blood going to the reattached body part becomes congested
and stagnant. The reattached part turns blue and lifeless and is at risk of being
lost. It is then that leeches are summoned to treat the threatening venous insufficiency,
but only when there is adequate arterial flow.
Contemporary leech therapy was pioneered by the surgeons, M. Derganc and F. Zdravic,
who published a paper in 1960 describing the use of leeches to assist in tissue
flap surgery -- surgery in which a flap of skin is freed or rotated from an adjacent
body area to cover a defect or injury. Their rationale behind this use of leeches
was based on a unique property of the leech bite, namely, the creation of a puncture
wound that bleeds for hours. For information related to this property of leeches,
see: Hirudin.
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