Therapy of bovine endometritis with Prostaglandin F2α [F2alpha] - an evidence based approach

The decision making process of practicing veterinarians as well as farm personnel and animal scientists should be based on objective information. Therefore, the implementation of evidence based medicine becomes increasingly important. However, there is a dearth of methodologically performed, rigorous, large-scale clinical studies in veterinary medicine resulting in a lack of research results of high evidence. Also, there is a remarkable variation in the quality of studies in veterinary and animal science. Hence, in veterinary medicine the increase of knowledge is mainly based on reviewing field reports rather than randomized, controlled clinical studies. Nevertheless, randomized, controlled, double blinded studies are the gold standard with regard to the evaluation of a given treatment. Postpartum uterine infections are a frequent disorder in dairy cattle with a prevalence up to 57.7%. In addition, they are reported to have an immense negative impact on reproductive performance resulting in high opportunity costs for the farmers. The overall objective of the conducted studies was to elucidate the status quo concerning the evidence of available literature and the implementation of evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM).