Preschool Wheeze and Chronic Cough: Board Questions

What this deck covers

Preschool Wheeze and Chronic Cough 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 board, MRCPCH and Prometric examinations. Written from published guidelines and standard paediatric textbooks, with the source named on every answer.

The 18 cases, in order

1. Only ever with a cold
2. Chesty even without a cold
3. Her friend’s child has an inhaler
4. What to keep at home for next time
5. It worked, so what now
6. Does he still need this
7. Will he grow out of it
8. A rattle you can feel
9. Noisy since he was tiny
10. Wheezy and not growing
11. Five weeks after the cold
12. Loud all day, silent asleep
13. Just a cough and nothing else
14. Eight weeks of acid tablets
15. Damp walls and a smoky flat
16. Which cough gets a scan
17. How she gives it at home
18. The label he was given at two

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Episodic viral wheeze, Multiple trigger wheeze, An inhaled bronchodilator through a spacer as needed, Cough-variant asthma, Stop the treatment, The indoor tobacco smoke and the damp housing, Change to a nebuliser, Relabel him as having asthma.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Ask what he is like between the colds. That single question sorts the preschool wheezers.
• Laughing and cold air are the triggers families never mention. Ask about them by name.
• Counting episodes is the wrong measure. Ask what happens between them instead.
• Home steroid for preschool viral wheeze feels right and does not work. The trials are clear.
• Write the stopping plan when you write the prescription, or nobody ever stops it.
• Stopping is a decision, not an omission. Give it a date and a review like any other treatment.

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 Respiratory Board Questions case decks · pediatric reference values.