Asthma

What this deck covers

Asthma in twelve clinical teaching 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.

The 12 cases, in order

1. Recognition and the preschool wheezer
2. Grading an acute exacerbation
3. Airway pathophysiology
4. Why the daily inhaler
5. Acute management and escalation
6. Reading a quiet chest
7. Inhaler technique
8. Choosing the delivery device
9. Before you raise the dose
10. When it is not asthma
11. Exercize and sport
12. Discharge and safety netting

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the twelve cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Destruction of the cartilage supporting the bronchus, Change to a different inhaled bronchodilator device, Intubate and ventilate now, The initial assessment overestimated the severity, Address the cat exposure, then review, Double the inhaled corticosteroid dose today, Cystic fibrosis presenting as recurrent wheeze, An inhaled foreign body, Gastro-oesophageal reflux causing chronic aspiration, A chest radiograph to confirm resolution, Spirometry to document recovery of lung function.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Wheeze only with viral infections, absent entirely between them, is the commonest preschool pattern and most of it stops by school age.
• Resistance varies inversely with the fourth power of the radius, so halving the calibre raises resistance sixteen-fold — a small change in calibre transforms the work of breathing.

The twelve worked cases in this deck, with the images and the full explanation of every option, are part of Pediatric Case Review membership. See what is included.

More from this system: all respiratory decks and question sets · pediatric reference values.