Molluscum Contagiosum and Viral Warts – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Molluscum contagiosum and viral warts 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 dimple in the middle
2. A line of new ones
3. A red ring at the edge
4. The swimming lesson
5. One on the lid margin
6. Far more than usual
7. Where nobody wants them
8. Squeezing them out at home
9. How long is this going to last
10. Corn or something else
11. Black dots after paring
12. Where the family thinks it came from
13. A fortnight is not a trial
14. Asking for the freezing
15. Flat ones across the cheek
16. Around three fingernails
17. Where they are is the problem
18. After the transplant

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Closed comedones, the earliest lesions of childhood acne, Scratching has carried the virus to fresh sites on her own skin, A course of oral antibiotics for a fortnight to settle it, He may not swim, since the pool water carries the virus to other children, Review by an eye specialist, since the eye itself is now involved, A further six months of watching, since these clear on their own, A different condition, since this site is never involved, No effect at all, since the numbers would rise for other reasons anyway, Most are gone within eighteen months, though some take longer, The firmness of the lump, which a callus never shows at all, Melanin, showing the lesion is producing pigment as it grows, Pressure alone, from shoes that do not fit his growing foot properly, It needs months of nightly use, with the surface pared each time, Arrange it for the same day, since it is the definitive treatment.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• A shiny dome with a central pit is molluscum.
• New lesions in a scratch line mean self-inoculation.
• A rash around molluscum is eczema, and treats as eczema.
• Cover the lesions and let the child swim as usual.
• A red eye beside a lid lesion needs the eye team.
• Hundreds of lesions plus other infections: check immunity.

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 dermatology case decks · pediatric reference values.