Acute Otitis Media – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

acute otitis media 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. Behind the bulge
2. Wait and see
3. Both sides, small child
4. The first drug
5. Ahead of the pain
6. Sudden relief
7. The hole afterwards
8. Who is in there
9. What the jab does
10. Around the cot
11. Why the small ones
12. Pink but moving
13. Still hot at day three
14. Very sudden pain
15. The next few days
16. Four in six months
17. Down the telephone
18. Behind the nose

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: A drum that is simply reddened by his crying, A prescription kept back, used only if she is no better, Because fever for two days always means a bacterial cause, Intravenous ceftriaxone as a single dose, Give paracetamol or ibuprofen regularly by the clock, The infection has spread into the bone behind the ear, The hole will stay open and he will need a hearing aid, Clostridioides difficile, Bacteroides and Listeria species, It reduces episodes caused by the types it covers, The age at which he first walked and began to talk fluently, Toddlers have no antibody against any bacteria at all, Both ears are infected and need treatment today, Change to co-amoxiclav for the resistant organisms, A pocket of skin eroding the upper part of the drum.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• A bulging, opaque drum means pus under tension.
• Most ear pain settles before an antibiotic would help.
• A child under two with both drums bulging is treated.
• Amoxicillin by mouth is first for the acute ear.
• Pain relief works best given before the pain peaks.
• Pain that stops with discharge: the drum has burst.

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.