BestBETs for Vets review shows global demand for CATs

CURRENT BRIEF VERSION: A 10-year review of BestBETs for Vets found the veterinary critically appraised topic database has built a modest but globally used evidence resource: 96 CATs across 27 topic areas, with canine medicine and reproduction the most common subjects, and users coming from more than 190 countries. The study, published in Veterinary Record Open, examined both the database’s content and website analytics, showing that traffic was driven largely by direct access rather than referrals, which suggests repeat use and brand recognition among veterinary professionals. BestBETs for Vets was developed by the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine as an open-access point-of-care evidence resource. (veterinaryevidence.org)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the paper is less about a single clinical finding and more about infrastructure for evidence-based practice. CATs are designed to answer focused clinical questions quickly, helping clinicians, students, and educators translate published research into day-to-day decisions when full systematic reviews or guidelines aren’t available. That matters in a profession where time, access, and confidence in literature appraisal can all be barriers. At the same time, CATs have known limits: they’re narrower and faster than systematic reviews, and they can become outdated if they aren’t refreshed. More broadly, a recent scoping review of causality assessment tools in human pharmacovigilance found that even structured CAT-style tools vary widely in design, from expert judgment to algorithms and probabilistic methods, and often need tailoring to specific outcomes or settings such as liver injury, severe cutaneous reactions, pediatrics, neonatal intensive care, or vaccines. That wider literature underscores the same basic point: structured tools are useful, but context matters and no single format fits every decision. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

What to watch: Whether the database keeps expanding beyond its first 100 CATs, updates older entries, and broadens coverage in underrepresented species and topic areas will determine how useful it remains as a clinical and teaching tool. The wider CAT literature also points to another challenge for evidence tools over time: they may need to adapt to newer diagnostics, biomarkers, and setting-specific questions rather than relying on one fixed appraisal format. (nottingham.ac.uk)