Dr Amber Leis

Dr Amber Leis Board certified plastic surgeon
Hand fellowship trained

I attended medical school at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and then moved to southern California for my Plastic Surgery residency at Loma Linda University. I spent additional time training at the University of Southern California at Keck/LAC to gain expertise in hand surgery and microsurgery. I now practice at the University of California at Irvine where I specialize in breast reconstruction, hand surgery, and complex microsurgical reconstruction.

06/03/2026

What a wonderful (but too brief!) visit to the meeting to talk about functional muscle transfer and catch up with so many dear friends. thank you for having me!!

This is hypothenar hammer syndrome. You can see how the small and ring finger are white and don’t have good blood flow i...
05/29/2026

This is hypothenar hammer syndrome. You can see how the small and ring finger are white and don’t have good blood flow in the video on the left, and how much better they are after surgery in the video in the right. This happens when one of the major blood vessels in our arm, the ulnar artery, gets damaged and blood stops flowing and clots at the wrist. To fix this, I need to replace the damaged section of the ulnar artery with a healthy section of artery from somewhere else in the body. The most common place I can find extra artery is in the thigh. This is like a plumbing problem: remove the bad pipe and replace it with a new one! We call it hypothenar hammer because ‘hypothenar’ is the name for the part of the palm on the small finger side of the hand and ‘hammer’ because it is often caused by using this part of the hand to hammer on tight tools. You can swipe for some graphic pictures showing the clotted artery and the reconstruction. For those in the know: I used the descending branch of the lateral femoral circumflex artery as the graft (yup, the pedicle of the ALT!) because studies have shown greater graft patency over time when arterial, rather than venous, interposition grafts were used. This patient interestingly also had an accessory abductor digiti minimi muscle which you can see was preserved. This muscle originates on the PL/or FCR. All patients provide consent for me to share their photos.

05/18/2026

Nine months after muscle transfer surgery, and this young man can bend his arm again! It is always the best feeling seeing patients recover motion after brachial plexus injury. This patient was lucky, and his injury did not affect his hand. This gave us more options for reconstruction of his elbow motion. To treat this patient, we borrowed an extra muscle from the inside of the thigh and transplanted it to his arm (lucky for us, we have a few muscles that are extra and can be used for this job). We connected the muscle to nerves in the arm that normally control a muscle that bend the wrist (lucky for us, we also have a few muscles that do this job also, and can spare one for this goal!) We also attached the muscle to blood vessels in the arm, and to the collar bone and biceps, so that as it recovered, it would bend the elbow. For those in the know, this was a delayed presentation upper plexus injury, and we were past the window of nerve transfers. We did a reverse gracilis, with the tendon at the clavicle and the muscle belly tubularized at the biceps tendon. The donor motor was the FCU branch of the ulnar nerve. has published a report like this combined with a Steindler flexorplasty, but we did not feel we needed that added step.

Would you believe that thumb is made out of another thumb? This little patient was so lucky because on one side she had ...
04/20/2026

Would you believe that thumb is made out of another thumb? This little patient was so lucky because on one side she had two thumbs, and on this side her thumb was underdeveloped. We were able to make the best of the situation and use the extra bone from her extra thumb to help reconstruct her underdeveloped thumb. You can swipe to see photos of both hands before and after surgery. I’ve showed you cases before where I move an index finger to make a thumb for some patients. Not every family is willing to have that surgery. For those patients we look for other options, like moving a toe bone to the hand to help make the thumb more stable. I have showed some examples of this type of case before. The operation I did for this little girl is very similar to those operations; except we used her extra thumb instead of her toe. This surgery only provides support for her finger; it does not recreate any of the muscles or ligaments that are important for thumb motion. So that means that she will need to have more surgery later to help make the thumb move. I have also showed a video recently for a patient who hand undergone a similar sequence of operations. I always talk for a long time with parents about what is best for them and for their child, and it is an honor to be trusted to take care of their baby. (All families have provided consent for sharing photos.)

02/06/2026

Claiming a new title for myself: nerve mom! Joking aside, we hope to see you at our amazing nerve course in May!!!! You can check out the formal post on the account 😊

This is constriction band syndrome. This very rare condition happens while babies are still growing in the womb: part of...
02/03/2026

This is constriction band syndrome. This very rare condition happens while babies are still growing in the womb: part of the sac that surrounds the baby gets wrapped around the baby and cause damage as they grow. This process can even cause amputation of fingers and toes, like they did for this patient. The band got so tight that it even fused her fingers together! To treat this, I carefully separated her fingers and used skin from her belly to help reconstruct them. Even though these fingers are short, she can do everything she wants to with them! For those in the know, this is acrosyndactyly. Even though it might look at first glance like Apert’s syndrome it is totally different! I use the lower abdomen as my donor site, in the same location as a future csection or abdominoplasty scar. All patients/parents provide consent for sharing.

01/25/2026

Can’t believe this was already more than a week ago! What a wonderful meeting of the American Association for Hand Surgery, American Society for Peripheral Nerve, and American Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery in Chula Vista. was strongly represented with .ida.fox as the president of ASPN, and the many incredible alumni of the program in leadership roles around the country. Can’t wait to see everyone next year in Miami!

01/19/2026

This is a ligament injury of the thumb. Ligaments are strong tissue that hold our bones and joints together, and when they are damaged our joints can hurt, or even be unstable, like in this case. You can see in the video on the left side how I can push this patient’s thumb away from her hand. The ligament damaged here is called the ulnar collateral ligament, or UCL. When this ligament is torn quickly, like in an accident, it is sometimes called a Skier’s thumb. When it is worn out slowly overtime from repetitive motion, it is sometimes called a Gamekeeper’s thumb. To fix these injuries I need to either repair the ligament or replace it with strong material that will support the joint. We often use small anchors that hold the repair to the bone. For those in the know, you can see the important parts of examination of the UCL including stabilization of the metacarpal prior to stressing the joint, and testing the joint in full extension to isolate the total joint stability (inclusive of the volar plate, and both accessory and proper collateral ligaments) and in 30 degrees of flexion to assess the isolated stability of the proper collateral ligament. (All patients provide consent to share photos.)

12/31/2025

Thank you for the incredibly opportunity through the traveling fellowship!! Thank you to the nerve nerds around the world who hosted me and shared ideas and opened their clinics and operating rooms to me. I had an amazing time.

12/23/2025

This is a pediatric trigger finger. It might not be something you realized can happen to children (this is a very common problem for adults) but it can! This happens when the tendon gets swollen - we don’t know why - and it no longer slides smoothly through the finger. The tendon normally lives in a special tunnel called the tendon sheath. Swelling of the tendon can cause the finger to get stuck in a bent position, or make it hard to straighten out and snap or click when it straightens. Sometimes kids get better with time, and sometimes the problem doesn’t go away even with splints and hand therapy. This patient’s finger was getting stuck all the time, and so their parent’s decided it was time for surgery. To fix the problem, we need to make more space for the tendon to move in the finger. This can be done by widening the tunnel that the tendon moves through. Sometimes in children we also have to make the tendon a little smaller too (for those in the know, resection of a slip of the FDS tendon is commonly needed in pediatric cases, unlike adults). You can see in the first video how the finger ‘snaps’ when I try to straighten it. You can swipe to see a photo of the swelling in the tendon, and another video showing how much better the finger moves after surgery! All patients and/or their parents provide permission to share the stories and videos 😊.

Address

4929 Forest Park Avenue
St. Louis, MO
63110

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Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

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+17144563077

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