Paediatric Ankle Injuries and Growth Plate Fractures — Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

The Child’s Ankle: The Growth Plate the Sprain Was Hiding 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. Sent home with a sprain
2. A film as a matter of routine
3. Applying the adult rule
4. Why only at this age
5. The views disagree
6. One line goes further
7. How long will it take
8. Managed as a sprain
9. She can still point the toes
10. Six weeks in plaster
11. Splinted with the toes down
12. Tender near the knee too
13. It is far too swollen
14. She will not stand
15. Only a small wound
16. It keeps giving way
17. Six weeks is standard
18. A rule for the department

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Parental request, A third plain view at an oblique angle, That landing on the feet loads the hindfoot bones, A cast for two weeks rather than six, A muscle tear in the calf, By arranging cross-sectional imaging, A structured balance and strengthening programme.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Feel where the tenderness is. Bone is not a sprain.
• Weight-bearing plus tenderness away from bone is the pair that spares a film.
• Decision rules assume a child who can answer them.
• This fracture exists because of when the plate closes, not how hard the fall was.
• When the views disagree, the fracture is not flat.
• Follow the fracture line. If it reaches the joint, the plan changes.

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 MSK and orthopaedics case decks · pediatric reference values.