Carbon Monoxide Poisoning – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Carbon monoxide poisoning 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. Two in the same flat
2. The number that reassures
3. Normal on the gas
4. Which bottle to send
5. The first thing to do
6. How long to keep going
7. When to make the call
8. Two patients, one bed
9. Weeks after coming home
10. Booking the review
11. Worse than the figure suggests
12. The colour nobody saw
13. Before the door is unlocked
14. Better on the school trip
15. Warmth in the tent
16. The quiet organ
17. The youngest fell ill first
18. Sending them home safely

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Carbon monoxide destroys red cells and causes a sudden anaemia, The monitor counts the bound pigment as though it were carrying oxygen, The sample was venous, so the result cannot be relied upon at all here, A breath test at the bedside, which has replaced blood measurement, Fifteen litres a minute through a mask with a reservoir, begun at once, Until the oxygen saturation on the monitor reaches one hundred per cent, Her age, since children under ten are always referred, Oxygen must be limited in pregnancy, because a high level harms the fetal eye, New memory and behaviour problems appearing several weeks later, Yearly lung function testing, because the airways carry the main long-term risk, A right shift of the curve, which improves delivery and protects the brain, It is present in almost every case and is the most useful bedside sign, The appliance is condemned and everyone in the house is tested, Chronic sinus infection, worse in the mornings after lying flat all night.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Carbon monoxide outcompetes oxygen on the pigment.
• A normal oximeter reading never excludes this gas.
• A normal oxygen tension says nothing about content.
• A venous sample is enough to confirm the poisoning.
• Highest possible oxygen, and start it straight away.
• Keep oxygen running until symptoms and level settle.

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 emergency and critical care case decks · pediatric reference values.