Iron Poisoning – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Iron poisoning 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. What the sums are based on
2. Something on the film
3. When to take the blood
4. Reaching for the black drink
5. Clearing what the film shows
6. Too ill to wait
7. Rose wine no longer
8. Better after eight hours
9. Why the blood turns acid
10. Being sick five weeks later
11. Pale at twenty minutes
12. Which bottle in the cupboard
13. A number that misleads
14. Taking it out of the blood
15. Making her sick at home
16. Bright, and on a low shelf
17. What to watch for at home
18. Yellow on the third day

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: The number of tablets alone, since all products hold the same strength, A plain film of the abdomen, which shows the tablets while they stay intact, Immediately on arrival, because the concentration only falls away from that point, Charcoal works here, but only when a laxative is given along with it, A polyethylene glycol solution run through the gut until the film is clear, Wait for the result to come back, since the dose depends entirely upon it, The disappearance of every tablet shadow from a repeat abdominal film, She can go home if she manages a drink and keeps it down for an hour, Free metal poisons the mitochondria, so acid accumulates and the gap widens, A viral illness of the gut, which will settle over the next few days at home, Bleeding into the stomach, which is the usual cause at this stage, None of them, since household products of this kind are all too weak to do harm, The binding capacity is unreliable once the concentration is high, Dialysis removes it quickly and should be started as soon as it can be arranged.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Only the elemental part of each preparation counts.
• Intact tablets still show on a plain abdominal film.
• The concentration peaks four to six hours later.
• Charcoal does not bind iron, so it has no place.
• Irrigate the whole gut until the film runs clear.
• A sick child is chelated before the number lands.

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 emergency and critical care case decks · pediatric reference values.