Takayasu Arteritis – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Takayasu arteritis 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. One arm, one number
2. Pleased about the wrong arm
3. What the criteria require
4. The vessel most attacked
5. Six months of nothing
6. The first prescription
7. Three flares in a year
8. She hates the scanner
9. Wider, not tighter
10. Dizzy when she turns
11. High arms, low legs
12. Breathless on the stairs
13. Not yet, and here is why
14. Brushing her hair
15. Who gets this
16. Three more places
17. Beaded, but not hot
18. Can he be discharged

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis of early onset, A narrowed artery to that arm gives a falsely low value, A blood pressure difference of more than ten between the arms, The radial artery at the level of the wrist joint, An inflammatory phase that comes before the vessels narrow, Methotrexate on its own, with steroids kept in reserve, A much longer course of the same steroid at a higher daily dose, Scanning every month is needed whatever the markers show, An aneurysm, which forms as well as narrowing in this illness, Simple postural hypotension of ordinary adolescence, Primary hypertension related to his weight, diet and inactivity, Deconditioning after many months of avoiding all forms of exercise, Wait until the inflammation is controlled before any procedure, A trapped nerve in the neck causing pain referred down the arm.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Absent pulse plus a bruit: think large vessel.
• Take the pressure in all four limbs, every time.
• Imaging proof is mandatory; the rest supports it.
• The subclavian is the vessel most often narrowed.
• The fever comes long before the pulse disappears.
• Steroids plus a second agent, right from the start.

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 rheumatology and immunology case decks · pediatric reference values.