UC Davis

BACKGROUND: Interventional radiology (IR) and interventional endoscopy (IE) have broad potential for minimally invasive therapy in veterinary patients, but the scope of original peer-reviewed veterinary IR/IE research publications has not been described. OBJECTIVES: Catalogue published applications and indications for noncardiac therapeutic IR/IE in animals and describe type and quality of veterinary IR/IE research over 20 years. METHODS: Highly-cited veterinary journals were searched to identify articles published 2000 to 2019 involving therapeutic IR/IE applications for clinical veterinary patients. Articles were assigned a level of evidence (LOE) according to published standards. Authorship, animal data, study design, and interventions were described. Change in publication rate, study size, and LOE of IR/IE articles over time was analyzed. RESULTS: One hundred fifty-nine of 15 512 (1%) articles were eligible, including 2972 animals. All studies were low LOE and 43% were case reports with ≤5 animals. Number of IR/IE articles per year (P < .001), proportion of journals articles pertaining to IR/IE (P = .02), and study size (P = .04) all increased over time, but LOE (P = .07) did not. Common target body systems were urinary (40%), digestive (23%) respiratory (20%), and vascular (13%). Common indications were nonvascular luminal obstructions (47%), object retrieval (14%), and congenital anomalies (13%). Most procedures involved indwelling medical devices or embolic agents, whereas tissue resection and other procedures were less common. Procedures utilized fluoroscopy (43%), endoscopy (33%), ultrasound (8%), digital radiography (1%), or fluoroscopy in combination with other modalities (16%). CONCLUSIONS: Treatments involving IR/IE have wide applicability in veterinary medicine but large, rigorous, and comparative studies describing these procedures are lacking.