Occupational Therapy

Library of the Health Sciences

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Devon Olson
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Critically Appraised Topics

Critically appraised topics (CATs) are very brief reviews which summarize current best evidence on an intervention or diagnosis.

The main limitation of CATs is their brief scope, which makes them more prone to selection bias than a systematic review or a rapid review.  But they have an important role to play in supporting evidence based practice – identifying gaps in the knowledge, quickly scoping the literature and informing policy.

CATs have been used since the 1990s, mainly in the fields of veterinary science, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dermatology, urology, radiology, nursing, business management and education.

Parts of a CAT

Like a systematic review, a certain methodology should be followed. Even though CATs are quick, compared to other reviews, they should still follow these steps:

  1. Define a clear, concise and focused question – use a search framework such as PICO to help you with this.
  2. Develop a search strategy – identify search terms, work out how to combine them and select a limited number of appropriate databases.
  3. Identify the relevant studies that help answer your question.
  4. Critically appraise the located evidence – describe and appraise the included studies. (Often the appraisal is limited to the methodological appropriateness of each study).
  5. Summarize your findings – what’s the “bottom line” suggested by the evidence?

* this list based on info from the libguide "Systematic and Systematic-like Reviews", Charles Sturt University, https://libguides.csu.edu.au/systematicreviews/cats

Guidelines