Growth Hormone Deficiency – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

growth hormone deficiency 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. Watching the line
2. More than one hormone
3. The look of it
4. Preparing for the test
5. A number that misleads
6. After the radiation
7. The bright spot in the wrong place
8. Finding the right dose
9. A hidden deficiency
10. Not growing on treatment
11. A curve in the back
12. After the tumour
13. Lumps at the site
14. Fewer injections
15. Knowing when to stop
16. Does it continue
17. Why not wait
18. A worry about cancer

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: His current height, which is below the 2nd centile, His small penis alongside the low glucose, Thin, with little fat and a long, narrow face, Stop all food for 48 hours beforehand, Poor nutrition can lower it without a deficiency, Antidiuretic hormone, from the back of the gland, She will never need any other hormone, Increase the dose to maximise his growth, Thyroid function, as treatment can unmask central hypothyroidism, His growth plates have already fused, A slipped growth plate at the top of the femur, Wait until he has been disease-free for a year, Stop the injections for a month, Growth hormone taken by mouth as a tablet.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Slow growth that crosses centiles matters more than being short.
• Newborn hypoglycaemia plus micropenis: think of more than one missing hormone.
• Short, plump and young-looking: think growth hormone.
• Testing near puberty: prime first, or constitutional delay will look like deficiency.
• Low IGF-1 in a thin child: think nutrition before growth hormone.
• Slow growth after cranial radiotherapy: growth hormone goes first.

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 Endocrinology Board Questions case decks · pediatric reference values.