Congenital Talipes Equinovarus – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

congenital talipes equinovarus 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. Four things at once
2. It comes up easily
3. Six items on a chart
4. How it is treated
5. Starting early
6. The last bit
7. Boots on a bar
8. It has come back
9. What else to check
10. A smaller shoe
11. Anything else wrong
12. How common
13. Hair on the back
14. Told before birth
15. Keeping up at school
16. Crying a day early
17. A rocker bottom
18. Turning in when he walks

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Adductus of the forefoot alone, with a normal heel and normal arch, A positional foot that can be brought to a right angle with gentle handling, The Cobb angle, which grades the degree of bony rotation present, Special boots worn from birth, with no casting and no procedure at all, In the first weeks of life, while the tissues are still soft, Another six weekly casts, since equinus always corrects with time in plaster, At night only for the first fortnight and then nothing afterwards, Relapse is unavoidable in every treated club foot whatever is done, The hips and the back, since the foot can be part of a wider disorder, The treatment has failed and the whole casting course must be repeated, It usually accompanies a chromosomal abnormality of some kind, About one in ten births, and far more commonly seen in baby girls, An underlying neural tube defect, since the feet have no sensation, The scan cannot show a club foot, so no action needs to be taken now.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Four elements in one foot, corrected in order.
• A supple foot that reaches the shin is positional.
• The Pirani score grades the foot at every visit.
• Casts in sequence, not an operation.
• Cast in the first weeks, while tissues stretch.
• Equinus goes last, usually with a tendon division.

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.