Ataxia, Tics and Movement Disorders — Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Ataxia, Tics and Movement Disorders 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. Twelve days after the spots
2. A cross and sleepless toddler
3. Three years of getting clumsier
4. Red eyes and repeated chest infections
5. Unsteady all afternoon, fine by supper
6. Found in grandma’s room
7. Where the registrar should start
8. Blinking since he was six
9. Whose problem is it
10. Six months of therapy and no change
11. The same flap every time
12. The same pattern across the school
13. Worse by bedtime, better by breakfast
14. Four hours after the injection
15. Five times since she was three months
16. Shaky since the inhaler went up
17. An illness nobody talks about
18. She has to get out of bed

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Acute post-infectious cerebellar ataxia, Acetazolamide, A brainstem encephalitis, Tourette syndrome, Clonidine given at night, Sodium valproate, Myoclonic seizures, Functional tic-like behaviours, A therapeutic trial of levodopa, Intravenous procyclidine or benztropine, Gastro-oesophageal reflux with posturing, Essential tremor, Overnight polysomnography.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• A cheerful child who cannot walk, two weeks after a virus. Watch, do not treat.
• Dancing eyes means go looking for a neuroblastoma, even when the abdomen feels normal.
• Areflexia with extensor plantars is a short list. Then listen to the heart.
• Write the radiation warning on the front of the notes. This is the child no one should scan casually.
• Look at the eyes between the attacks. Interictal nystagmus names the channel.
• Ask what is in the visitor’s handbag. One tablet can flatten a toddler.

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.