The Child with a Tracheostomy – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

the child with a tracheostomy 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. Nothing is moving
2. It has come out
3. What travels with him
4. How far down
5. Dry air, hard plugs
6. No sound at all
7. Letting the air through
8. Coughing at mealtimes
9. The first change
10. Two pairs of hands
11. Red and lumpy at the edge
12. Blood on the catheter
13. Keeping the water out
14. Green in the pot
15. Getting rid of it
16. Back to school
17. It will not go back
18. Who needs to know

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Give a salbutamol nebuliser, Put in the spare tube that is one size smaller, A nebuliser machine and a supply of antibiotics, As far as the catheter will go, on every single occasion, Add warmth and moisture to the gas she breathes, His hearing has deteriorated since the last test was done, An electronic device held to the neck, A trial of thickened feeds with no assessment of any kind, Not until the track has formed, about a week later, Go ahead alone, as this is a routine and simple procedure, A skin cancer arising at the edge of the opening, A clotting disorder that has only now become apparent, Water must be kept out of the tube at all times, Intravenous antibiotics in hospital for two weeks.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Blocked or not? The suction catheter answers it.
• If the tube will not pass, use the smaller spare.
• Two spare tubes travel with the child everywhere.
• Measure the suction depth; never suction blindly.
• No nose means the gas must be warmed and moistened.
• The tube sits below the cords, so no voice is made.

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 ENT and ophthalmology case decks · pediatric reference values.