Congenital Muscular Torticollis – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

congenital muscular torticollis 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. A lump in the neck
2. Tilt one way, chin the other
3. What becomes of it
4. What the images add
5. Which way she lies
6. Two babies, one morning
7. After the first year
8. A face that is not level
9. Flat at the back
10. The shape that needs a surgeon
11. The tilt that a cover undoes
12. Stuck after a sore throat
13. Arching at the breast
14. Before he was born
15. A neck that was always short
16. A lean that began this month
17. Ready to stop coming
18. A question about headgear

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: A collection of pus tracking along the muscle sheath, The side the head leans towards, away from where the chin points, It grows steadily and always has to be cut out in theatre, Entirely normal muscle, so the tilt must arise from the eyes, Alternating the side she feeds and plays on at every chance, The age of each baby, which matters more than anything else found, A rigid collar worn day and night for the whole of next year, An unrelated syndrome affecting the bones that form the face, Moulding from lying always on the same preferred side, Moulding from the position that he prefers to lie in, A habit that has formed and will settle without any action, An infection within the bones of the lower spine, Posturing driven by acid coming up, which settles when treated, An inherited disorder of muscle passed down through her family.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• A firm lump inside the neck muscle, not a gland.
• Head leans to the tight side, chin turns away from it.
• The lump grows, then goes; the tightness may stay.
• A broadened muscle with normal planes fits the diagnosis.
• Vary the feeding side, the arm and where the toys are.
• A mass plus lost rotation means the longest course.

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 MSK and orthopaedics case decks · pediatric reference values.