Bell Palsy – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Bell palsy 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 brow still moves
2. The ear came first
3. The eye rolls up
4. Both sides at once
5. A smelly ear
6. After a hard delivery
7. Only the lip
8. A face that never smiled
9. Swollen lips again
10. Sounds too loud
11. The sweets taste odd
12. What the parents ask
13. The antiviral question
14. Six days in
15. A red, gritty eye
16. Blinking when she smiles
17. Scoring the face
18. No change by spring

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: In the right parotid gland, affecting the branches, Antibiotics for the otitis media, with ENT review, A partial third nerve palsy on the right side, A brainstem glioma affecting both of the facial nuclei, A cholesteatoma eroding into the facial canal, Congenital absence of the facial nucleus on one side, An upper motor neurone lesion of the left side, Infant botulism from eating contaminated honey, Melkersson-Rosenthal syndrome, A lesion of the cochlear nerve itself, The lingual branch of the mandibular nerve, About half develop the same palsy on the other side, Antivirals alone do not help and are not advised, Start oral prednisolone now, whatever the delay.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Brow spared, hand weak: look above the nucleus.
• Red drum and a droop: treat the ear, call ENT.
• Eye rolls up as the lid fails: a protective reflex.
• Both sides weak after the woods: think of the tick.
• Smelly ear for months, then palsy: cholesteatoma.
• Newborn palsy with a bruise by the ear: forceps.

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 Neurology case decks · pediatric reference values.