Scabies – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Scabies 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. Itchy at night
2. A baby, not a schoolchild
3. Down the magnifier
4. Thick crusts, little itch
5. Proving it on a slide
6. Two itchy children
7. Why she itched late
8. Lumps that will not go
9. Back again after treatment
10. How to put it on
11. What finishes the course
12. Everyone at once
13. Still scratching afterwards
14. What to do with the sheets
15. More than one dose
16. Why not for this one
17. The other bottle
18. A whole nursery

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Atopic eczema flaring in the creases of both of the wrists, The palms, the soles, the scalp and the face as well, A dried clot of blood left behind by the child’s scratching, Ordinary psoriasis of the hands, the feet and the elbows, An organism, its eggs or its faecal pellets on the slide, Dry skin present over the outer surfaces of both arms, The mother received a far larger number of organisms, Living organisms that the treatment has failed to kill, An untreated close contact has passed it back to him, To hot damp skin, over the eruption only, for one hour, Nothing further at all, since one application always cures, Only once they develop an itch of their very own, Itch can carry on for weeks after a successful cure, Professional fumigation of the whole of the house.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Night itch with burrows in the webs is scabies.
• In a baby, treat the scalp, face, palms and soles.
• A dark speck at the leading end is the organism.
• Thick crusts and little itch: the crusted form.
• Adult, eggs or pellets on the slide confirm it.
• New night itch plus an itchy sibling: think scabies.

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 dermatology case decks · pediatric reference values.