Otitis Media with Effusion – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

otitis media with effusion 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. A quiet ear
2. A flat trace
3. Give it time
4. The next step
5. Around the theatre
6. Working loose
7. A wet tube
8. Something to try
9. While he is asleep
10. One ear only
11. How much it costs
12. Weeks later
13. Short-term fixes
14. White marks
15. Back again
16. Two peaks
17. One test is not enough
18. Fluid, not pus

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: A hole in the drum with discharge coming through, A drum that cannot move because fluid lies behind it, Insert ventilation tubes on the next available operating list, A further three months of watchful waiting and review, A hearing aid on each side while the fluid persists, They have blocked and dropped into the middle ear space, The canal skin is infected and needs a wick, Avoiding all dairy products until the fluid clears, Adenoidectomy at the same time, reducing repeat surgery, Wax impacted deeply against the left eardrum surface, No measurable loss at all on either side, A pocket of skin developing in the upper drum, Neither changes how the ears are six months later, Skin growing into the drum, which needs surgery now.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• A dull drum with a fluid level and no pain at all.
• A flat trace means a drum that will not move at all.
• Most effusions clear on their own within three months.
• Three months of fluid and a measured loss: tubes.
• A hearing aid is the route when surgery is unwise.
• Tubes work their own way out within about a year.

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 ENT and ophthalmology case decks · pediatric reference values.