PFAPA and Periodic Fever Syndromes – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

PFAPA and the periodic fever syndromes 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. The calendar on the fridge
2. The tablet that ends it
3. Sooner than before
4. Something to take every day
5. An operation that cures it
6. What the years will bring
7. What the swabs show
8. A mark that stays
9. Weeks of it, not days
10. Fever after the injections
11. A rash in the cold
12. Turning off one signal
13. No test to send
14. What it will not do
15. The prescriptions that keep coming
16. Writing it down at home
17. How young it starts
18. When it does not fit

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Mouth ulcers, which follow many ordinary childhood infections, A single dose of oral corticosteroid, which ends it within hours, A second illness has been added on top of the original one, Daily iron, since the bouts are driven by low iron stores, Removal of the tonsils, after which the bouts stop in most children, Lifelong treatment will be needed to prevent eventual organ failure, Glandular fever explains the throat and the neck glands, Coeliac disease, of which mouth ulceration can be an early feature, Tumour necrosis factor receptor-associated periodic syndrome, Repeated viral illness caught at the childminder’s house, An allergy to a washing powder used on her clothes and bedding, A high-dose antihistamine for the rash and fever, There is no gene test; the pattern of the bouts makes the diagnosis, Protein leaks into the urine in about one third of children.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Clockwork fevers, and a well child in between.
• One dose of steroid ends the attack within hours.
• Steroid aborts the attack but narrows the gap.
• Cimetidine daily can widen the gap between attacks.
• Taking the tonsils out ends the attacks in most.
• It burns out in childhood and leaves nothing behind.

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.