Identifying and Evaluating Evidence in Reptile Medicine

Abstract

Reptile medicine is a broad field with a relatively incomplete data set to work from in the relevant literature. Despite the popularity of pet reptiles, few veterinary schools provide significant education in reptile medicine. The lack of professional veterinary medical education presents challenges to the clinician seeking to provide the best care for their reptile patients. Techniques for identifying data relevant to reptile medicine, obtaining data, evaluating data quality, and determining relevance to clinical cases are discussed in this article. Use of the best available evidence should lead to improvements in the practice of reptile veterinary medicine.

Key words: bioinformatics, evidence-based medicine, reptiles, veterinary medicine