Craniopharyngioma – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

craniopharyngioma 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. What the scan shows
2. Looking back
3. Awaiting theatre
4. How much to remove
5. Precise radiation
6. New headaches
7. Never thirsty
8. Stopping the weight gain
9. Always tired
10. Unmasked
11. Growing anyway
12. Falling behind at school
13. Vomiting at home
14. A safer routine
15. Looking younger
16. What shapes the future
17. Moving on
18. After the drain

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: A solid mass inside the fourth ventricle, Slow growth for years before the headaches, A bone age X-ray of his left hand, Radical removal of every part of the tumour, Proton beam therapy, sparing nearby brain, A new, unrelated brain tumour, She can be left to drink according to thirst, Wait until he is clearly obese before starting any intervention, Hypothalamic damage disrupting sleep rhythms, Hydrocortisone damaging the kidneys, Her deficiency test was wrong, A change of school, Intravenous hydrocortisone and close sodium checks, Increase the desmopressin dose.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Cystic, calcified and suprasellar: craniopharyngioma.
• Craniopharyngioma: the growth chart often knew first.
• Before craniopharyngioma surgery: check cortisol and thyroid.
• Craniopharyngioma touching the hypothalamus: spare it.
• Radiotherapy for a child’s craniopharyngioma: protons often preferred.
• Craniopharyngioma cyst grows back: think drainage.

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 Endocrinology Board Questions case decks · pediatric reference values.