Cardiogenic Shock – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Cardiogenic shock 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. Sweating through the feed
2. Chest or heart?
3. The drug that opens and squeezes
4. Pressure in the airway
5. Slow and shut down
6. Quiet heart, full neck
7. The night after theatre
8. A number from the line
9. Reaching for the diuretic
10. The tablets from home
11. What to tell them tonight
12. Settling the room
13. The kidney result
14. A bridge to somewhere
15. A reversible cause
16. Getting her there
17. The line that stopped working
18. Leaving the unit

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: A chest infection that is not yet responding to treatment, A natriuretic peptide, raised when the heart is stretched, A pure vasoconstrictor to raise the blood pressure quickly, It dries the fluid out of the lungs directly, Pacing, because the slow rate itself is the problem, Give a generous volume of fluid and observe him, Bleeding into the chest that has not been noticed, The white cell count measured from the very same sample, Wrong, because output must be restored before it, Continue them, since the fever is still troubling him, That survival at this level of support is very unlikely, Withhold pain relief so that his signs remain clear to see, Poor forward flow, improving as the heart is supported, A further week on the same drugs.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Sweating feeds and a gallop: the heart, not the chest.
• A raised natriuretic peptide points at the heart.
• An inodilator squeezes the pump and opens the pipes.
• Airway pressure unloads the ventricle, not just the lung.
• If the rate is the problem, pace rather than infuse.
• Distended necks and quiet sounds: drain the pericardium.

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.