FDA allows leeches as medical tool

By Seattle Times news services

JOE MAHONEY / AP Jim Lloyd, right, looks into a mirror as Denver Health Medical Center nurse Brian Perry applies a leech to his right ear, which was partially severed in an automobile accident.

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The Food and Drug Administration approved an application from French firm Ricarimpex to market leeches for medicinal purposes. The company has been breeding leeches for 150 years, the FDA said.

Medicinal leeches — Hirudo medicinalis — normally make their home in fresh water.

The use of leeches to draw blood goes back thousands of years. They were widely used in the belief that bloodletting helped to cure a wide range of complaints from headaches to gout. They reached their height of medicinal use in the mid-1800s.

Today, doctors around the world use leeches to remove blood pooled under skin grafts for burn patients, or to restore circulation in blocked veins by removing pooled blood, the FDA said in a statement.

Leeches are particularly useful in surgeries to reattach body parts such as fingers or ears, Ricarimpex said on its Web site. They can help restore blood flow to reconnected veins.

Leeches are already widely used in American hospitals, and companies that raised and sold them here before 1976 were allowed to continue doing so. However, a medical-device law passed that year required newcomers to the field to seek approval.

The FDA said it considered the leeches a medical device. The agency approved their sale after reviewing medical literature and safety data provided by Ricarimpex.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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