Brucellosis – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

brucellosis 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 key question
2. The fever chart
3. The painful joint
4. Before the cultures go
5. Cultures stay negative
6. Reading the titre
7. The blood count
8. The rest of the house
9. Pain in the buttock
10. The young child’s regimen
11. The older child’s regimen
12. Back again
13. What to give now
14. The spine
15. Headache and confusion
16. A swollen testis
17. Her other tablets
18. Keeping it away

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Whether anyone at school has had a sore throat this month, An undulant fever, rising and falling in waves over weeks, Joint involvement is rare, so another diagnosis must be sought, Freeze the samples first so that the organism cannot survive, Bone marrow, which grows the organism more often than blood, A titre of 1:20 in any child, whatever the symptoms, A marked eosinophilia with a normal lymphocyte count, Take no action, since the other children are probably unaffected, The sacroiliac joint, a typical site in older children, Doxycycline alone for two weeks, then review the fever, Rifampicin alone for six weeks to avoid side effects, He has an immune deficiency that must be investigated, Repeat the same combination, since resistance is rarely the cause, The same six weeks of treatment, since the spine responds quickly.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Prolonged fever, sweats, sore joints: ask about raw milk.
• Brucellosis fever: waves over weeks, with drenching sweats.
• Children with brucellosis: think knee or hip arthritis.
• Suspected brucellosis: warn the laboratory first.
• Negative blood cultures in brucellosis: culture marrow.
• Endemic brucellosis: titre of 1:160 or more with symptoms.

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 Infectious Disease case decks · pediatric reference values.