ABS Pediatric Surgery study guide
ABS Pediatric Surgery · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
Pediatric surgery certification is the American Board of Surgery credential for surgeons who provide diagnostic, operative, and postoperative care to children with congenital and acquired anomalies and diseases. The scope is deliberately broad: it includes developmental, inflammatory, neoplastic, and traumatic conditions, and it extends from surgical problems in utero through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and sometimes young adulthood. The ABS Pediatric Surgery study guide has 8 sections and about 2,494 words.
01Fetal and Prenatal Surgical Conditions
Fetal surgery sits at the junction of obstetrics, genetics and neonatal surgery. The candidate must know which anomalies are found prenatally, which benefit from in-utero intervention, and which simply need planned delivery at a centre with neonatal surgical capability.
333 words, about 2 min02Neonatal Surgery
Bilious vomiting at any neonatal age is malrotation with midgut volvulus until excluded. The diagnostic study is an upper GI contrast series, not a contrast enema; look for a duodenojejunal junction that fails to cross the midline and lies below the duodenal bulb.
294 words, about 1 min03Gastrointestinal and Hepatobiliary Surgery
Any infant jaundiced beyond 14 days needs a fractionated bilirubin. Biliary atresia is an obliterative cholangiopathy presenting with conjugated hyperbilirubinaemia, pale stools and dark urine; Kasai portoenterostomy works best before 60 days and results fall sharply with age.
317 words, about 2 min04Pediatric Surgical Oncology
The abdominal mass is the classic discriminator. Wilms tumour arises from kidney, is smooth, rarely calcifies, may extend into the inferior vena cava and presents with haematuria or hypertension; management is primary nephrectomy followed by adjuvant chemotherapy (COG) or pre-operative chemotherapy (SIOP).
282 words, about 1 min05Pediatric Trauma and Surgical Critical Care
Children have a compliant chest wall, so pulmonary contusion occurs without rib fractures; a large head and surface area; and a spleen that is the most commonly injured solid organ. Head injury remains the leading cause of traumatic death.
330 words, about 2 min06Thoracic Surgery in Children
Know the family: congenital pulmonary airway malformation (CPAM), bronchopulmonary sequestration (systemic arterial supply), congenital lobar emphysema (hyperlucent lobe with mediastinal shift needing urgent lobectomy), bronchogenic cyst and pleuropulmonary blastoma, a rare malignancy whose type I lesion looks cystic and benign. Many CPAMs are asymptomatic and the timing of resection is debated; large lesions causing respiratory distress or hydrops need intervention.
299 words, about 1 min07Genitourinary and Anorectal Surgery in Children
Grade hydronephrosis by Society for Fetal Urology criteria; most mild cases resolve. Ureteropelvic junction obstruction is confirmed with a Lasix renogram.
324 words, about 2 min08Endocrine, Head and Neck, and Soft Tissue Surgery
Midline: a thyroglossal duct cyst elevates on tongue protrusion and is treated by the Sistrunk procedure, excising the cyst, tract and central hyoid; simple excision recurs. A dermoid cyst is midline but does not move with the tongue.
315 words, about 2 min