Urticaria and Angioedema – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

Urticaria and angioedema 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. Blotches after a cold
2. Marks left behind
3. Every day since the spring
4. Sometimes, when it is bad
5. Falling asleep in class
6. Out of the lake
7. Pinpoints after the bus
8. Hours after the rucksack
9. The painkiller in the cupboard
10. Puffed up, and never itchy
11. One test to start with
12. The attack in front of you
13. Before the tooth comes out
14. Six months into the tablets
15. A year of tablets, still covered
16. Something else worth checking
17. One brown patch that puffs up
18. Will she have this for ever

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: A contact allergy to a washing powder used on her clothing, Vasculitis of the small vessels rather than ordinary weals, A panel of food tests should be sent, since one will be positive, Stop it, since it has plainly not worked for this child, Change to a modern antihistamine that does not cross into the brain, A firm stroke across the back with the blunt end of a pen, Friction from clothing rubbing against the damp skin, An inherited swelling disorder presenting in adolescence, Avoid that drug, which aggravates weals without being an allergy, Chronic urticaria with swelling as one of its features, A full blood count looking for a raised eosinophil count, Fresh frozen plasma, which is the only option in every centre, Preventive cover just ahead of the procedure, agreed with her team, Continue it, as a reaction after six whole months cannot be due to it.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Migrating weals in a well toddler follow a virus.
• A weal that lasts days and stains is not ordinary.
• Daily weals for six weeks is chronic urticaria.
• Chronic weals need the antihistamine every single day.
• Old antihistamines cost schoolwork; modern ones do not.
• Cold urticaria: an ice cube raises the weal on rewarming.

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 dermatology case decks · pediatric reference values.