Best practice recommendations for prehospital veterinary care of dogs and cats.

Objective: To examine available evidence on prehospital care in human and veterinary trauma and emergency medicine and develop best practice guidelines for use by both paramedical and nonparamedical personnel in the approach to the prehospital care of dogs and cats.

Design: Systematic evaluation of the literature gathered via medical databases searches of Medline, CAB abstracts, and Google Scholar.

Synthesis: From a review and systematic evaluation of the available evidence, consensus guidelines on the approach to prehospital care of dogs and cats in 18 scenarios were developed.

Conclusions: Due to the lack of current evidence in the veterinary prehospital arena, best practice guidelines were developed as an initial platform. Recommendations were based on a review of pertinent human and available veterinary literature as well as a consensus of the authors' professional opinions. It is anticipated that evidence-based additions will be made in the future.