Congenital Syphilis – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Congenital Syphilis 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. Screening everyone
2. An old result
3. Following the response
4. Higher than his mother
5. A negative booking test
6. The work-up
7. The treatment
8. Missed doses
9. After the first dose
10. The runny nose
11. Not moving the arm
12. On the film
13. Found later
14. Treated before pregnancy
15. After treatment
16. Her wider care
17. The wrong antibiotic
18. A sign on the scan

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Because the test also detects rubella immunity, An old, treated infection rather than active disease, A treponemal antibody test, Antibody passed from the mother only, Rescreening in late pregnancy when risk continues, A single repeat blood titre only, Benzylpenicillin by vein for ten days, Continue from day six and add the missed doses, A reaction to dying organisms, not an allergy, None, since syphilis is only sexually transmitted, A brachial plexus injury from birth, A single fracture line across the shaft of one tibia, A cleft lip, a cataract and deafness, No treatment, but titres followed until negative.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• A cheap test at booking prevents a devastating newborn infection.
• Treponemal tests remember; non-treponemal tests report what is happening now.
• Follow the non-treponemal titre down to know the treatment worked.
• A baby’s titre that outruns his mother’s is his own infection talking.
• One negative test at booking covers the booking, not the whole pregnancy.
• Look at the spinal fluid and the bones: syphilis goes to both.

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 Neonatology case decks · pediatric reference values.