Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

hypoplastic left heart syndrome 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. The fetal scan
2. A closed septum
3. Balancing the flow
4. Blood in the nappy
5. The first operation
6. A smaller baby
7. The type of shunt
8. A sudden fall
9. Arms and legs
10. A leaking valve
11. Looking for a cause
12. The rest of the family
13. Another pregnancy
14. Protecting the shunt
15. The second stage
16. First winter
17. Slow to gain
18. Talking about the future

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Only staged surgery, as it is the one option, Birth at a cardiac centre with catheter intervention ready, Too low, and he needs supplemental oxygen, Cow’s milk protein allergy from the breast milk, Replacing the mitral valve with a mechanical one, Heart transplantation within the first week, Diastolic run-off stealing coronary flow, A lung infection that has developed overnight, Narrowing of the rebuilt aortic arch, It is a normal finding after the Norwood, No test, as it is always sporadic and never has a cause, Nothing, as it is not inherited, Higher than average, so offer a fetal scan, Ibuprofen every eight hours.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Antenatal HLHS: discuss every option, honestly.
• HLHS with an intact atrial septum: deliver next to the cath lab.
• HLHS before surgery: low eighties is about right.
• HLHS with a swollen belly and blood: think NEC.
• Norwood: the pulmonary artery becomes the aorta.
• Small, high-risk HLHS: consider a hybrid.

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 cardiology case decks · pediatric reference values.