Ichthyosis – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Ichthyosis 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. Fine scale on the shins
2. Only the boys in the family
3. The eyes of the affected boy
4. The labour that stalled
5. Wrapped in cling film
6. Large plates all over
7. Blisters first, ridges later
8. Hair that snaps off
9. Thick plates and deep cracks
10. The first days of care
11. Collapsing on sports day
12. Lids that will not close
13. He keeps asking what
14. The cream from abroad
15. What to use every day
16. When creams are not enough
17. The smell in the classroom
18. Asking about the next baby

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Lamellar ichthyosis, present from the day of birth, Steroid sulphatase, absent on the X chromosome, As cataracts needing early surgery, An unrelated problem with the muscle of the uterus itself, A membrane that cracks and sheds over some weeks, Steroid sulphatase, carried on the X chromosome, A junctional blistering disorder of the newborn period, A lamellar ichthyosis complicated by nutritional deficiency, A lipid transporter needed to build the barrier, Early surgical removal of the tight covering, Dehydration from water lost through the skin, An operation to release the lower lids, arranged immediately, Scale filling the ear canals and blocking them, Skin infection that has entered the blood.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Spared creases with deep palm lines: vulgaris.
• Dark adherent scale on a boy’s neck: sulphatase loss.
• Corneal specks here are harmless and need no action.
• Stalled labour can precede the X-linked form.
• The taut newborn membrane cracks and sheds early.
• Plate-like scale: transglutaminase 1 is the usual fault.

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.