Dengue – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

dengue 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. Day four in Jeddah
2. Only two days in
3. Itching as it ends
4. A second time round
5. Two numbers moving apart
6. A normal systolic
7. The first hour
8. Falling but still shocked
9. Liver enzymes in thousands
10. Day eight and breathless
11. A very low count
12. Ready to go home
13. Well enough for home
14. A street with three cases
15. A heavier child
16. Hour by hour at the bedside
17. Something for the vomiting
18. A baby of seven months

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Home care with oral fluids and a review in two days, NS1 antigen, detectable in the first days of illness, A drug reaction to the paracetamol he has been taking, He is protected for life against every type of the virus, Plasma leaking out of the vessels, concentrating the blood, Normal, since the systolic pressure is reassuring, Dextrose saline at maintenance rate only for the day, Heart failure from fluid overload after the two boluses, Severe dengue, from organ failure even without shock, A further crystalloid bolus for presumed shock, Transfuse now, since the count is below 20 x 10^9/L, Normal temperature for 12 hours, with platelets still falling, Home with oral fluids and daily review until recovery, Use the bed net at night, since the mosquito bites after dark.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Any warning sign in dengue means admission today.
• Days 1-5: send NS1 antigen or PCR for dengue.
• White islands in a red sea: dengue is recovering.
• Second dengue with a new type: higher risk of severity.
• Haematocrit up, platelets down: plasma is leaking.
• Narrow pulse pressure in dengue: this is already shock.

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.