Chronic Diarrhoea and Malabsorption: Board Questions

What this deck covers

Chronic Diarrhoea and Malabsorption 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 board, MRCPCH and Prometric examinations. Written from published guidelines and standard paediatric textbooks, with the source named on every answer.

The 18 cases, in order

1. Peas and carrots in the nappy
2. The healthy diet making it worse
3. Salty kisses and greasy stools
4. A gland that is not keeping up
5. Bloating since the trip abroad
6. Still loose weeks after the virus
7. What the surgeon took out
8. Loose a year after the operation
9. What happened when he stopped eating
10. Eight months and two centile lines
11. Thrush, pneumonia and an abscess
12. A rash at both ends and the fingers
13. Bruising with normal platelets
14. Wobbly, with a very low cholesterol
15. Diarrhoea from the first week
16. What to order at the first visit
17. Which one cannot wait six weeks
18. How fast to start feeding him

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Chronic non-specific diarrhoea of childhood, A sweat test, Giardia infection, Bile acid malabsorption, A secretory process, in, A primary immunodeficiency, Deficiency of zinc, Abetalipoproteinaemia.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Plot the growth first. A thriving child with chronic diarrhoea rarely needs a single blood test.
• The healthy-sounding diet is often the cause. Ask what has been taken out before adding tests.
• Ask whether the child tastes salty. Families volunteer it once, and never again unless asked.
• A low elastase with a normal sweat test means counting the neutrophils next.
• One negative stool sample proves nothing here. Send three, or ask for the molecular test.
• A red, raw perineum after gastroenteritis is acid stool. It points at the sugar, not the protein.

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 Gastroenterology Board Questions case decks · pediatric reference values.