Scarlet Fever and Invasive Group A Streptococcus – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

group A streptococcal infection 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. In the elbow folds
2. Why the rash
3. A negative quick test
4. Scoring the throat
5. The first course
6. Allergic to it
7. Well between times
8. A sore bottom
9. Drops on the trunk
10. Where it grew
11. Five days later
12. Still shocked
13. Mother and baby
14. A titre for today
15. Too many sore throats
16. A winter surge
17. On the ward
18. A second time

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Target lesions typical of erythema multiforme, Pyrogenic exotoxins made by strains carrying the toxin genes, Reassure, since a negative quick test excludes it fully, No score applies at her age, so she should be admitted today, Phenoxymethylpenicillin by mouth for ten days, Phenoxymethylpenicillin, since the reaction was mild, An underlying immune deficiency needing tests, Anal fissure from constipation needing only softeners, Guttate psoriasis, a recognised post-infective eruption, The child with the throat swab and the highest fever, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which colonises damaged lungs, Stopping the penicillin in favour of vancomycin, Preventive antibiotics for her too, alongside his treatment, It is always positive in children, so it misleads.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Petechial lines in the elbow creases: Pastia lines.
• Scarlet fever rash is toxin-driven, strain by strain.
• High suspicion, negative quick test: back it with culture.
• FeverPAIN four or five: an immediate antibiotic is fair.
• Scarlet fever: phenoxymethylpenicillin for ten days.
• Penicillin allergy with scarlet fever: clarithromycin.

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 Infectious Disease case decks · pediatric reference values.