A systematic literature search to identify performance measure outcomes used in clinical studies of racehorses.

The research article explores the variety of performance measures used in clinical studies on racehorses, with an aim to identify those most commonly employed and their respective benefits and drawbacks. The article reveals a wide array of performance measures, suggesting a standardized measure will improve comparability across studies.

Methodology of the Research

• The researchers carried out a systematic literature search with the aim of understanding the usage of racing performance as a clinical study outcome for racehorses.
• The searching criteria combined the terms “racing” and “performance” with “horses” or “equidae” in both MEDLINE and CAB Abstract databases.
• The collected data was organized in standardized forms, categorizing the outcome variables as binary, categorical, and quantitative. The use of performance indices was also taken into account.

Results of the Study

• The search yielded 217 studies using racing performance as a variable, with 117 different performance measures in total. All studies did not use a single unified performance measure, but 90.3% of them used more than one variable.
• Most frequently used data related to race starts and earnings – included in 88.0% and 54.4% of studies respectively.
• A set of seventeen variables were used ten times or more, with the top five comprising of: ‘return to racing’, ‘number of starts’, ‘days to first start’, ‘earnings per period of time’ and ‘earnings per start’.

Conclusion of the Research

• The research acknowledges a possible limitation: the search strategies might not have identified all the relevant papers, introducing bias into the review.
• The paper concludes that performance indices have been developed to improve assessment of clinical interventions, but these are not widely adopted in scientific literature.
• Finally, the researchers recommend that the two most commonly identified measures, “return to racing” and “number of starts over a defined period of time”, be considered for future systematic reviews and meta-analyses. These features would potentially enhance the comparability of different studies until a standardized, gold-standard measure is developed for racing performance outcomes.