Blunt Abdominal Trauma – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Blunt abdominal trauma 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. Which organ takes it
2. Whether to send him round
3. The pressure will not hold
4. Bleeding, and holding on
5. A high grade, a calm child
6. A belly full of air
7. Green vomit on day four
8. Fed around the blockage
9. A line through the gland
10. Under the domes
11. The tube took an odd course
12. Contrast around the bowel
13. Too small a fall
14. A bright spot on the pictures
15. Home, then back again
16. Different from now on
17. Writing the letter
18. What admission is for

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: The left kidney, which is protected by the ribs but exposed to a direct blow, No scan at all, since a well child with a soft abdomen does not need the radiation, A computed tomography scan first, so that the surgeon knows exactly what to expect there, Discharge home tonight with a letter, since he is comfortable and alert already, The child’s physiology rather than the grade written on the scan report, A dose of a muscle relaxant, so that the abdominal wall can be felt properly, A tear of the mesentery, which has allowed a loop of bowel to twist around its own base, Oral feeding as he tolerates it, with an antiemetic given before each of his meals at home, Transection of the pancreas where it lies across the spine, A raised left side of the diaphragm, with the stomach lying directly beneath it, A large collection of air is trapped in the left pleural space, An injury of the ureter on one side, which is leaking above the level of the bladder, Inflicted injury, since a toddler’s abdomen is not damaged by a low fall, Removal of the spleen, since contrast in the substance means it cannot be saved.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• The spleen is the organ blunt force finds first.
• A soft abdomen and normal observations need no scan.
• A child who will not stabilise goes to theatre.
• A stable child keeps the spleen and stays in bed.
• The grade describes the tear, not the child.
• Empty the stomach before you trust the abdomen.

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 emergency and critical care case decks · pediatric reference values.