Visceral Leishmaniasis – Board-Style Questions

What this deck covers

visceral leishmaniasis 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. A spleen to the pelvis
2. A test at the bedside
3. Where to look for it
4. Seen on the marrow slide
5. Proteins out of balance
6. What kills these children
7. The family dog
8. An older patient
9. Bitten at dusk
10. A tracing before each dose
11. Day twelve of the drug
12. Before the capsules start
13. Still a positive strip
14. Fever again in spring
15. Spots on the face
16. More than the drug
17. Protecting the brothers
18. Four weeks later

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the 18 cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia with marrow failure, An rK39 antibody strip test on a finger-prick sample, A lymph node aspirate from the neck, Platelet clumps overlying cells in a thick smear, Polyclonal B-cell activation raising total globulin, Rupture of the enlarged spleen after a minor fall, Rodent burrows, from which fleas spread it to people, A karyotype, since chromosomes may explain the spleen, The bite of a sandfly that feeds in the evening, Daily hearing tests for inner ear toxicity, Splenic infarction from the enlarged spleen, Take each dose on an empty stomach at bedtime, As expected, since antibodies persist for years, By a repeat rK39 strip test from a finger prick.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Fever, huge spleen, pancytopenia, Jazan: kala-azar.
• Suspected kala-azar: start with the rK39 strip test.
• Most sensitive sample for kala-azar: splenic aspirate.
• Nucleus plus rod inside a macrophage: Leishmania.
• Low albumin, very high globulin: think of kala-azar.
• Kala-azar deaths: mostly from bacterial infection.

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.