CAT - Should we use anti-ulcer medication in foals?

Hospitalised foals are often treated with anti-ulcer medication. The aim of this CAT is to discuss whether omeprazole and sucralfate should be routinely used in sick or hospitalised foals. This has been addressed by asking the question, in sick or hospitalised foals does treatment with omeprazole and/or sucralfate improve survival? The literature was searched using the PubMed search engine using the terms “foal AND (omeprazole OR sucralfate) AND survival”. This search did not produce any results so searches were repeated using combinations of the search terms. Retrieved articles were studied for relevance, bibliographies of the retrieved articles were studied for further relevant articles and other articles suggested as ‘similar’ by the search engine were also studied. This process yielded two articles [1,2] that could be considered partially to answer the question. Due to this lack of evidence the search was repeated to include other species by replacing the search term “foal” with “neonate” and the same process of studying retrieved and linked articles was performed. This yielded two articles with some relevance [3,4] ...