Oesophagitis, caustic ingestion and oesophageal injury — branching viva

Station opening

Examiner: "Classify oesophageal injury in a child and tell me which one you never let out of your sight." [1]

Strong candidate (must-hit)

• Separates oesophageal injury into the chronic oesophagitides (reflux, eosinophilic, infective and pill oesophagitis) and acute injury (caustic ingestion, button battery and mechanical foreign body); frames the distinction by timescale — oesophagitis over weeks, caustic over hours, a battery over two hours; and names the oesophageal button battery as the one that must be removed within two hours because it burns liquefactively at its negative pole and can form a fatal fistula. [1] [7]

Weak candidate

• "Oesophagitis is just reflux, and if a child swallows something we watch and wait for it to pass." [1]