Bronchiectasis in children — structured oral (viva)

Branch 1 — The wet cough and first move

Examiner: "This girl has coughed for five months. What is the single feature that concerns you most, and what is your first thought?" Candidate: The feature that concerns me most is that this is a daily wet, productive cough lasting far beyond four weeks that only ever partly settles with antibiotics. That pattern is chronic suppurative lung disease until proven otherwise — the reversible front end of bronchiectasis — rather than a run of viral infections. My first thought is that this needs proper assessment, a chest high-resolution CT, and a systematic search for a cause, not another short antibiotic course. ^[1]