Dr Amber Leis

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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.

09/13/2026

What an amazing meeting in Brazil! So grateful for new friends and new ideas. Thank you Dra. Raquel Iamaguchi for inviting me, to Dra Marcela Penna šŸ–šŸ» for being the most incredible host, to Jayme Bertelli for sharing so many pearls, to Sami Tuffaha for hanging with us and to Renata Leal Rabelo Carolina Monteiro Sampaio for making us feel so welcome. ASPN

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 donā€™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 donā€™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 ā€˜hypothenarā€™ is the name for the part of the palm on the small finger side of the hand and ā€˜hammerā€™ 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. Iā€™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.)

Address

4929 Forest Park Avenue
St. Louis, MO
63110

Opening Hours

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

Telephone

+17144563077

Website

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