Foreign Bodies in the Ear and Nose – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

foreign bodies in the ear and nose 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 giveaway smell
2. The one that cannot wait
3. What is left behind
4. Something is moving
5. Do not wash it out
6. Round and smooth
7. This one can wait
8. Three attempts too many
9. A puff of air
10. Time for the anaesthetist
11. Pushed the wrong way
12. What the film shows
13. Years in the nose
14. The ear that will not settle
15. Two at once
16. Before it happens again
17. Look everywhere else
18. Nobody saw it happen

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: The absence of fever, Within the hour, in theatre if she will not cooperate, Ordinary swelling that will settle, Reassure him and review next week, The pea swells with water, Repeating the grip with larger forceps, Hold her down firmly now and remove it before she leaves, A middle ear infection, Have the parent blow into the mouth with the clear nostril closed, A third attempt with the child wrapped up, A sudden attack of asthma brought on by the distress and crying, Two separate small round objects lying on opposite sides of the septum, A stone formed around an object retained for years, An underlying immune deficiency affecting the skin.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• One smelly nostril in a toddler: something is in it.
• A battery in the nose comes out within the hour.
• Battery burns leave adhesions that block the nose.
• Kill the insect with oil before touching the ear.
• Never irrigate an ear that holds a seed or a bean.
• Use a hook past a bead, never forceps in front.

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.