Rabies – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

rabies 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. Afraid of the water
2. Weak legs months after a dog
3. The earliest clue
4. Why the face is worse
5. Proving it in life
6. Under the microscope
7. A bat in the bedroom
8. A lick on the hand
9. A graze that stayed dry
10. Bleeding bites on the leg
11. Where the injection goes
12. Already vaccinated
13. Months after the bite
14. The dog next door
15. Moving to a village
16. Once the signs appear
17. The nurse at the bedside
18. Stitching the face

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Tetanus from the old leg wound, Paralytic rabies, starting in the bitten limb, A sore throat with enlarged tender neck nodes, Saliva on the face is swallowed and absorbed by the stomach, Saliva for PCR and a nape of neck skin biopsy, Lewy bodies, Watch the child for two weeks for fever, Immunoglobulin alone, as she is too young for vaccine, Vaccine alone, with no immunoglobulin needed, A vaccine course alone, starting within the week, Intravenously over one hour through a peripheral cannula, Nothing, as her earlier course protects her completely, Begin the full course now, since incubation can be long, It may stop once the bite has completely healed.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Spasm at the sight of water: think encephalitic rabies.
• Weakness spreading from a bitten limb: paralytic rabies.
• Tingling at an old healed bite is an early rabies sign.
• Bites on the head and face give the shortest incubation.
• Rabies in life: saliva PCR plus nape skin biopsy.
• Negri bodies: eosinophilic inclusions in rabies neurons.

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.