Infantile Spasms – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

infantile spasms 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. Colic, said the first doctor
2. What the trace shows in a spasm
3. The first bedside look
4. A known chromosome change
5. A quiet surprise at eight weeks
6. Checks during the course
7. The vaccines that are due
8. Has it worked
9. Back after the taper
10. Kinky hair and a floppy boy
11. Bald patches and a sore rash
12. Spasms and a small phallus
13. One patch of odd cortex
14. Something in both eyes
15. Jerks, but thriving
16. What decides his future
17. A murmur on the ward
18. A difficult first week of life

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Keep a detailed feeding diary for two weeks, An electrodecremental response of low voltage, Fundoscopy for a cherry-red macular spot, Spasms here usually resist every treatment, Reversible signal change from the drug, Deafness, ataxia and skin blisters, Give it on time, during the steroid taper, A normal brain MRI at two weeks of treatment, Vigabatrin, the first-line drug not yet used, Congenital rubella with deafness, Severe atopic eczema with skin infection added, LIS1, on chromosome 17, Work-up for removal of the dysplastic area, Toxoplasmosis.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Clusters on waking and lost smiles: film it, act fast.
• During a spasm, the EEG often flattens: electrodecrement.
• Every infant with spasms needs a Wood lamp skin check.
• Spasms in Down syndrome: treat promptly, often respond.
• New symmetric thalamic signal on vigabatrin: drug effect.
• Steroids for spasms: pressure, temper and weight rise.

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 Neurology case decks · pediatric reference values.