About five years ago, my wife broke her third metacarpal. It required pins, which were put in. After the pins were put in, there was a fairly large lump on the back of her hand (raised about 1/4 inch at its highest and about an inch long.) She asked the surgeon about it a few weeks later and he said that it was fluid and would go away if she massaged it regularly.

I felt the lump at that time and it wasn't fluid. I didn't have the sense to get a second opinion at that time.

Five years later it's starting to hurt when she flexes her hand. If you palpate the lump when she moves her fingers, you can feel tissue sliding roughly and unevenly over the pins. We visited a different orthopedic surgeon, and he said she could have the pins removed. He mentioned that there would be risk of another break as the bone would be weakened until the pin holes filled in, and the ever-present risk of infection.

I asked him if the situation was normal, and he said that it often happens that way.

I'm wondering if maybe he wasn't covering for the other surgeon though. Is it normal for pins in a metacarpal to stick up so high they create a sort of tent-like mound on the back of the hand which eventually leads to (apparent) tissue abrasion of the tendons?

And if it isn't normal, is it possible that the surgeon did nothing wrong and this could still happen? I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. It SEEMS to me like very shoddy surgery to leave those pins sticking out so far, but I don't know enough about it to make that judgment. The most suspicious thing to me is that he told her the lump would go away if she massaged it.