EBVM/Epi: Health – EBVM Intro: Intro to Animal Health

⭐ 1. Q: Is animal health simply the absence of disease?

No. Animal health can include normality, biological function, homeostasis, physical and psychological well-being, and productivity including reproduction.

⭐ Q: What are the five major components used to describe animal health?

The five major components are normality, biological function, homeostasis, physical and psychological well-being, and productivity including reproduction.

🔎 What this means:

• Normality → normal appearance, behavior, movement, and absence of disease

• Biological function → the body’s physiology is functioning properly

• Homeostasis → body functions remain balanced and coordinated

• Physical and psychological well-being → health includes both the body and mental/welfare state

• Productivity including reproduction → appropriate growth, reproduction, and function for the species

💡 Big idea:
Animal health is more than just “not being sick.” These are five different ways to evaluate whether an animal is healthy.

⭐ 2. Q: What does “health as normality” mean?

Health as normality means that an animal has normal appearance, behavior, position, movement, body soundness, and absence of disease.

⭐ 3. Q: What does “health as biological function” mean?

Health as biological function means that the animal’s physiology is functioning properly rather than malfunctioning.

⭐ 4. Q: What does “health as homeostasis” mean?

Health as homeostasis means that body functions remain in a balanced, coordinated state and the animal remains in harmony with its environment.

⭐ 5. Q: Why are physical and psychological well-being components of animal health?

Animal health can include both physical condition and psychological well-being rather than focusing only on whether disease is present.

🔎 What this means:

An animal might technically be free of a diagnosed physical disease but still have poor overall health if its psychological well-being is poor.

⭐ 6. Q: How can productivity and reproduction be components of animal health?

Health can be evaluated partly by whether an animal can grow, reproduce, and behave normally for its species and type.

⭐ 7. Q: Why is there not one single perfect definition of animal health?

Animal health is multidimensional, so different definitions may emphasize different aspects such as physiology, behavior, well-being, homeostasis, or productivity.

8. Q: Why is it important for veterinarians to have a clear concept of animal health?

A clear concept of animal health helps veterinarians take better histories, communicate clearly, and evaluate multiple aspects of an individual animal’s or group’s health.

⭐ 9. Q: What is One Health?

One Health is an integrated approach that recognizes that the health of humans, animals, and the environment are interconnected.

⭐ 10. Q: What is the main idea connecting the different components of animal health?

Animal health should be evaluated broadly rather than judged only by whether an animal currently has a recognizable disease.

⭐ 11. Q: What is EBVM?

EBVM stands for Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine

EBVM is the use of the best available scientific evidence together with clinical expertise and owner and patient factors to make the best clinical decisions for patients.

🔎 What this means:

EBVM combines three things:

• Best available scientific evidence

• Clinical expertise

• Owner and patient factors

⭐ 12. Q: Why is EBVM more than simply finding an answer in the scientific literature?

EBVM requires scientific evidence to be combined with the veterinarian’s clinical expertise and the individual owner and patient factors.

🔎 What this means:

A research paper might say that a treatment works on average, but you still need to ask:

• Is it appropriate for this patient?

• Does the veterinarian’s clinical experience affect how it should be used?

• Is it realistic or acceptable for this owner?

💡 Think:

Evidence + veterinarian + patient/owner → clinical decision

⭐ 13. Q: Why is EBVM important and relevant to veterinary practice?

EBVM helps veterinarians make clinical decisions using current evidence rather than relying only on habit, tradition, or what they were originally taught.

🔎 What this means:

Veterinary knowledge changes over time.

Doing something only because:

“That’s how I’ve always done it”

is not EBVM.

Veterinarians therefore need to continue developing their knowledge throughout their careers. ASK intro FS26 (1)

⭐ 14. Q: What are important challenges of using EBVM in veterinary medicine?

Challenges include limitations in the strength of available veterinary evidence, differences in access to information resources, and difficulty searching effectively when the clinical question is poorly defined.

🔎 What this means:

Your lecture emphasizes that:

• Veterinary medicine may have to rely on poorer sources of evidence than human medicine.

• Veterinary students may have greater database and journal access than practicing veterinarians.

• A vague question makes it difficult to find useful evidence.

⭐ 15. Q: What are the major steps of the EBVM cycle?

The EBVM process includes Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Apply, and Assess.

🔎 What this means:

Ask → form a clear clinical question
Acquire → find relevant evidence
Appraise → evaluate the evidence
Apply → use the evidence in practice
Assess → evaluate its impact

A generalized example of the EBVM cycle:

A veterinarian can ask a focused question, acquire relevant studies, appraise their quality, apply the evidence to the patient, and assess the outcome.

🔎 What this means:

For example:

Ask: Does caloric restriction increase lifespan in dogs?

Acquire: Search the literature for relevant studies.

Appraise: Determine whether those studies provide trustworthy evidence.

Apply: Decide whether the evidence is appropriate for the particular patient and owner.

Assess: Evaluate the effect after applying the decision.

💡 The EBVM cycle is a process, not just a literature search.

17. Q: Can EBVM be used only for diseases and sick animals?

No. EBVM can also be used to answer questions about normal or healthy conditions.

🔎 What this means:

For example, your course uses questions about:

• nutrition

• longevity

• stress reduction

• healthy animals

⭐ 18. Q: Why is a well-formed question fundamental to the EBVM process?

A well-formed question clearly identifies what information is needed, making it easier to perform a focused and useful literature search.

A major mistake is starting a search while having only a vague idea of what you are actually asking.

For example:

“Are supplements good for cats?”

is too vague.

What supplement?
What cats?
What health effect?

A specific question gives you something you can actually search.

⭐ 19. Q: What does (S)PICO stand for?

(S)PICO stands for (Species) Patient or Population/Problem, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome.

🔎 What this means:

S = Species

P = Patient, population, and/or problem

I = Intervention

• treatment

• prognostic factor

• exposure

C = Comparator

• comparison or control

O = Outcome

• what you want to measure or determine

⭐ 20. Q: What makes a clinical (S)PICO question well formed?

A well-formed (S)PICO question clearly identifies the relevant population, intervention, comparator, and outcome and is specific enough to guide a literature search.

🔎 What this means:

Your professor recommends being reasonably specific at first, because you can loosen your definitions later if the search is too narrow.

🧠 21. Q: In cats, what is the correctly structured PICO question about fish oil and inflammation?

In cats, does adding fish oil compared with feeding a conventional diet prevent inflammation?

🔎 What this means:

P = cats

I = adding fish oil

C = conventional diet

O = prevention of inflammation

22. Q: How can PICO be applied to the example of reducing stress in indoor cats?

In indoor-housed adult cats, does daily interactive play and environmental enrichment compared with routine care reduce stress-related behaviors?

🔎 What this means:

P = indoor-housed adult cats

I = daily interactive play and environmental enrichment

C = routine care

O = reduced stress-related behaviors

⭐ 23. Q: What are the five main topic areas of clinical questions in veterinary practice?

The five main topic areas are treatment, prognosis and incidence, etiology and risk, diagnosis, and prevalence.

🔎 What this means:

A clinical question may ask:

• Treatment → Does an intervention work?

• Prognosis & incidence → What is likely to happen, or how often does something newly occur?

• Etiology & risk → What causes or increases the risk of an outcome?

• Diagnosis → How well does a test identify a condition?

• Prevalence → How common is something in a population?

🟡 24. Q: Which study designs are associated with the five major clinical-question topics in this lecture?

Different clinical questions are best answered by different study designs: treatment by randomized controlled trials, prognosis/incidence by cohort studies, etiology/risk by cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional studies, diagnosis by diagnostic evaluation studies, and prevalence by cross-sectional studies or surveys.

🔎 What this means:

A study design is simply how researchers organize a study to answer a question.

• Treatment → “Does this treatment work?” → randomized controlled trial

• Prognosis & incidence → “What happens over time / how many new cases occur?” → cohort study

• Etiology & risk → “What causes this or increases risk?” → cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional study

• Diagnosis → “How well does this test detect disease?” → diagnostic evaluation study

• Prevalence → “How common is this?” → cross-sectional study or survey

⭐ 25. Q: What does the Acquire step of EBVM involve?

Acquire involves finding the best available, current, and relevant information that can answer the well-formed clinical question.

⭐ 26. Q: What information sources can be used to find veterinary evidence?

Veterinary evidence can be searched using databases such as CAB Abstracts and PubMed, Google Scholar, and collections of evidence summaries and systematic reviews.

The lecture specifically mentions:

Databases

• CAB Abstracts

• PubMed

Broader scholarly search

• Google Scholar

Evidence summaries/systematic-review resources

• Veterinary Evidence

• BestBETs for Vets

• VetSRev Database

⭐ 27. Q: How do literature databases differ from Google Scholar?

Databases use structured, curated records and produce more reproducible searches, whereas Google Scholar searches a broader and less standardized range of scholarly material.

🔎 What this means:

Databases

• journal articles and some conference proceedings

• human-curated inclusion criteria

• structured records

• searchable citation and abstract fields

• searches are more reproducible

Google Scholar

• searches a broader range of scholarly material

• includes grey literature, books, reports, etc.

• records may be incomplete or inconsistent

• searches full text

• searches are less reproducible

Reproducible means someone else could use the same search strategy later and get basically the same set of results.

⭐ 28. Q: How should an MSU student access databases such as PubMed?

Students should access databases through MSU Libraries so their MSU affiliation can provide access to subscribed journal content.

⭐ 29. Q: How is a PICO clinical question translated into a database search strategy?

Identify important concepts from the PICO question, generate useful keywords and synonyms for each concept, and combine those terms using appropriate search techniques.

🔎 What this means:

For example:

P = cats
→ cat, cats, feline, Felis catus

I = fish oil
→ fish oil

C = conventional diet
→ conventional diet, normal diet

O = inflammation
→ inflammation, inflammatory response

Then those terms are combined into a database search. FS26 EBVM Acquire (1)

⭐ 30. Q: What do the Boolean operators OR and AND do in a literature search?

A Boolean operator is literally just a word you type between search terms to tell a database how you want those words combined.

The two important ones here are OR and AND.

Use OR for synonyms:

cat OR cats OR feline

This means:

“Give me results containing any of these terms.”

Use AND between different concepts:

cat AND fish oil

This means:

“Give me results containing both concepts.”

💡 Think:

OR = more possibilities

AND = more requirements/specificity

31. Q: What does the Boolean operator “NOT” do?

Typing “NOT” excludes results containing a specified term and should be used cautiously because it can remove relevant articles.

“⭐ 32. Q: What do quotation marks and truncation do in database searching?

NOT” can make a search narrower, but it can accidentally throw away useful evidence.

⭐ 32. Q: What do quotation marks and truncation do in database searching?

Quotation marks search for an exact phrase, whereas truncation uses an asterisk to search multiple word endings from the same root.

🔎 What this means:

Quotation marks:

“fish oil”

searches those words together as an exact phrase.

Truncation:

feline*

can retrieve word variations that begin with the same root, depending on the database.

Similarly:

surviv*

could retrieve terms such as survival and survive.

Your materials caution that wildcard rules can differ among databases.

⭐ 33. Q: How are parentheses used in a database search strategy?

Parentheses group related terms so the database knows which terms should be processed together.

🔎 What this means:

For example:

(cat OR cats OR feline) AND (“fish oil”)*

The parentheses keep all the cat-related synonyms together as one concept group.

🧠 34. Q: Which search correctly includes the terms cat, feline, and Felis catus?

The appropriate search is cat OR feline OR “Felis catus”.**

🔎 What this means:

OR is used because these are alternative terms representing the same population concept.

Quotation marks keep “Felis catus” together as a phrase.

The asterisk allows word variations where appropriate.

⭐ 35. Q: Why is it sometimes unnecessary to include the comparator from PICO in a database search?

If the comparator is understood to be standard or conventional treatment or practice, including its keywords may unnecessarily restrict the search.

🔎 What this means:

Your PICO question can still contain a C.

But the database search does not necessarily need every PICO component if one of them makes the search too restrictive.

You can determine the actual control or comparison by reading the study’s Methods section.

⭐ 36. Q: What are important fundamentals of efficient literature searching?

Efficient searching uses focused keywords, synonyms, Boolean operators, exact phrases, truncation, parentheses, and filters while adjusting the search based on the results obtained.

🔎 What this means:

Do not throw every possible restriction into the search at once.

Useful tools include:

• OR for synonyms

• AND between concepts

• quotation marks for exact phrases

• * for truncation

• parentheses for grouping

• filters when appropriate

Apply narrowing tools gradually because using too many at once may eliminate useful results.

⭐ 37. Q: What should you do if a PICO question or search strategy is not producing useful evidence?

Modify the question or search terms by changing the specificity or wording of the concepts being searched.

🔎 What this means:

The lecture gives examples such as:

• making the intervention more specific

• reframing fish oil as omega-3 fatty acid supplementation

• defining the type of inflammation or condition more specifically

So searching is an iterative process.

You may need to adjust the question and try again.

38. Q: Does getting more search results mean that a resource provides better evidence?

No. A larger number of results does not necessarily mean that the results are more relevant, specific, or useful.

🔎 What this means:

In the class examples, Google Scholar returned dramatically more results than CAB Abstracts or PubMed.

But Google Scholar also searches a much broader and less standardized set of material.

So:

More results ≠ better results.

39. Q: What should you examine besides an article’s title when acquiring evidence?

You should determine what type of source it is, examine more than the title, and determine whether the full article is accessible.

🔎 What this means:

A title may sound perfect while the actual article does not answer your clinical question.

⭐ 40. Q: How can PubMed searches and useful results be managed for future use?

PubMed allows searches to be saved with their search terms and filters, and useful articles can be temporarily organized using features such as the Clipboard.

⭐ 41. Q: What does the course expect you to know about managing references and reporting search strategies?

You should be able to preserve and organize your search results and search methods so the search can be documented or repeated, although detailed reference-management procedures are not emphasized in this module.

🔎 What this means:

The learning objective includes:

“manage your references and report your search strategies.”