I am hoping that someone with a lot more gymnastics experience can help me out with this. DD had a 5th metatarsal avulsion fracture last fall and it failed to heal after 8 weeks so she had surgery and they inserted a screw. It finally healed. The Doctor know wants us to consider taking it out. He said that if it doesn't bother her that it doesn't matter if we take it out or leave it in. Well she has only been on impact for 3 weeks after 3 1/2 months on crutches and 3 weeks in walking boot so it is going to take awhile to build up the muscles to try harder landings and more advanced tumbling. She has been jumping and doing front and back tucks and none of that bothers her screw. The only thing that bothers her is when it gets touched on the head of the screw. Doctor said if she wasn't an active kids than he would just leave it in but wants us to consider taking it out since she is a gymnast but wasn't 100% sure it need to come out. Does anybody with more gymnastics knowledge know if more impact and hard landings in the future will affect this. If it doesn't hurt now could it hurt down the road. She is a 13 year old level 9 and wants to do college gymnastics so I see many more years of this. If she takes the screw out she will be off impact again for a couple of weeks. The Doctor says the longer we wait to take it out the harder and more complicated the surgery could be because of calcification around the screw. We could wait for a few more months and see if the harder landings hurt but at the same time she has another injury right now and so she can't do much anyway so if she has to be off impact for a few weeks she might as well do it right now. Any thoughts as to the long term impact of leaving the screw in?