Obstructive Sleep Apnoea in Children: Board Questions

What this deck covers

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea and Sleep-Disordered Breathing in 18 board-style clinical cases with worked explanations. Each case gives you a clinical vignette, four options, the correct answer, and an explanation of why each of the other three is wrong, with the guideline or textbook it follows named on the answer.

Board-style teaching questions for paediatricians and trainees preparing for board, MRCPCH and Prometric examinations. Written from published guidelines and standard paediatric textbooks, with the source named on every answer.

The 18 cases, in order

1. Snoring, then a gasp
2. Bouncing off the walls at school
3. What the operation achieves
4. Who cannot skip the sleep study
5. Nothing to report, check anyway
6. Still snoring after the surgery
7. Three years on a waiting list
8. Home the same afternoon?
9. Snoring and dropping centiles
10. Dry for years, wet again now
11. Pauses with no effort at all
12. Headaches every morning
13. Better on his front
14. Before the hormone is started
15. A normal study, still worried
16. Blocked nose all year round
17. Back again six months later
18. A referral that never mentions sleep

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Primary snoring, Removal of the tonsils and adenoids, Repeat the question at school age, Complete resolution, Inadequate calorie intake, The sleep-disordered breathing, Central apnoea, Non-invasive ventilation at night, Measurement of thyroid function.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Ask the parent to film him asleep on a phone. It settles more than any clinic history.
• Ask every child referred for attention problems whether they snore. It takes one question.
• Healthy child, big tonsils, witnessed pauses. Surgery cures most of them within weeks.
• Reserve the study for children whose history will under-report how bad it is.
• Half of them have it and most parents have not noticed. That is why the screening is objective.
• Warn them before the operation. An unmet expectation costs you the family’s trust afterwards.

Work through the deck once for recognition, then again a week later to test yourself — each question gives the answer and explains why every other option fails.

More from this system: all Respiratory Board Questions case decks · pediatric reference values.