The Floppy Infant and Neuromuscular Disease — Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

The Floppy Infant and Neuromuscular Disease 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 paediatric board, MRCPCH and licensing examinations. Written from published guidelines and standard paediatric textbooks, with the source named on every answer.

The 18 cases, in order

1. Slips through the hands but kicks hard
2. Bright eyes in a still body
3. The parents want an answer this week
4. Found before anything showed
5. A slow handshake in the clinic
6. Climbing up his own legs
7. What the parents read online
8. Sleepy in the first lesson
9. Dark water after the match
10. Trouble on the dental table
11. Fine at breakfast, drooping by supper
12. Better by the third week
13. Tripping over his own toes
14. Stairs and hairbrush
15. A big baby and a stuck shoulder
16. Weak after the pasta
17. No worse at six months
18. Where to look first

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Spinal muscular atrophy type 1, Serum creatine kinase, Creatine and coenzyme Q10 supplements, Depression related to loss of ambulation, Becker muscular dystrophy, Anaphylaxis to the neuromuscular blocker, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Juvenile dermatomyositis, Juvenile myasthenia gravis, in, The lysosomal storage disorders affecting muscle, in, A persistent Moro reflex beyond the age at.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Floppy and strong is the brain. Floppy and weak is the nerve, the junction or the muscle.
• A baby who cannot move but can charm you across the room has anterior horn cell disease.
• Suspect it, send the gene. Biopsy and needles belong to the era before the blood test.
• Screening finds him before the weakness does. Treat then, not when the parents notice.
• Every floppy newborn deserves a handshake with the mother. The diagnosis is often in her grip.
• Any boy not walking by 18 months, or walking oddly, gets a creatine kinase. It costs nothing to think of it.

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 Neurology case decks · pediatric reference values.