Dr Amber Leis

10/26/2025

What a treat to celebrate the portrait unveiling for a legendary surgeon who has been a mentor, role model, trail blazer and world changer. Scott Levin, beyond being an incredible surgeon and human being, has pushed the specialists in orthopedic and plastic surgery to work more closely with one another in the hand, nerve, and limb salvage space. We are stronger together. 💪🏻 AND even more wonderful to have one of my beloved mentees as my date. I can’t wait to see what is next for you .tiourin 💕

10/23/2025

What a crazy week! Vancouver BC to New Orleans to hit both of our major society meetings. Got to celebrate important milestones with friends and mentors, catch up with mentees, watch my residents crush the resident bowl, and made some new connections. Taught a few flap courses and gave some lectures along the way too! Now for a nap…

10/02/2025

Would you believe that thumb is made out of a toe? Swipe for a video of the motion for this little boy. I am so thrilled for him and his family. He had two surgeries to get to this point. I’ve showed you cases before where I move an index finger to make a thumb for patients who are born without one, or who are born with very underdeveloped thumbs. Not every family is willing to have that surgery. For those patients I can remove a toe bone to help stabilize their underdeveloped thumbs. This surgery only provides support for their finger, it does not recreate any of the muscles or ligaments that are important for thumb motion. So that means that they need to have more surgery later to help make the thumb move. And that is exactly what I did for this young boy. His parents did not want a pollicization (moving the index finger) and so instead I used his toe bone to reconstruct his thumb (you can swipe to see the X-rays showing how this looks, and how the foot looks now too!) After he healed we did the next surgery, called an opponensplasty, to help give his thumb more motion. This operation borrows an extra tendon from the ring finger, and you can look through my old posts to see some videos of how that looks. I also changed the shape of the space between his index finger and thumb to make it easier for him to grab things. In the future I will transfer some fat from other parts of his body to improve the shape of the thumb. For those in the know: to honor cultural preferences and still provide the best opportunity for function for my patients, I will perform free non-vascular 4th metatarsal transfer for patients under 4, and free vascularized 2nd toe MTPJ transfer for older children (l’ve posted a case of this before.) A pollicization is without a doubt the superior functional surgery, and achieves reconstruction in a single stage as opposed to multiple steps, however not all families choose it.

08/06/2025

Highlights of my first few months here at include my first brachial plexus birth injury case here at Wash U. It is so great to start building back this part of my practice: it is a condition I am very passionate about treating! Something fun and new here is that I have multidisciplinary partners who are also invested in providing cutting edge care - Dr. McEvoy in neurosurgery and Dr. Wall in orthopedic surgery 💕. We all bring a different set of eyes to these cases and I know the outcome will be the very best as a result.

07/24/2025

I am so thrilled to have received word that I have been selected to become an associate member of the Academy of Master Surgeon Educators in the ! Surgical education is a passion of mine, and I am honored to represent and continue our mission to lead in this space. Thank you to the people who supported me in this, I am so grateful for each of you.

07/11/2025

What an absolute joy to be able to operate with this woman whom I have admired for so long. She is an incredible surgeon and educator. you are so lucky to have been shaped by this visionary!

06/14/2025

These cats corralled pretty easily, all things considered. What a pleasure to have the entire Division together and host Dr. Joan Lipa for our 29th (!!!!) Annual James Barrett Brown research day. The lasting legacy of the early leadership at continues to echo in the extraordinary research being conducted by our faculty and research fellows.

02/09/2025

Is it really 2:42AM and we are just finishing surgery?! You betcha. I always tell students that surgery is a hard career. It is a demanding profession, one where the stakes are high and the consequences of failure are enormous. This is why we stay late and work long hours day after day: to give our best to our patients. In the years I spent training and the near decade I’ve spent in practice, I have learned that the weight of responsibility and the sacrifices required in this specialty can take a toll. The antidote to this burnout is joy, and joy is a habit that we can cultivate intentionally. I take time every day to reflect on the blessings in my life, to practice gratitude for the opportunity to change lives and work with amazing colleagues and trainees and students, and to try to spread kindness. Because yes surgery is hard, but if you choose to see it as such, it is also the most amazing thing a human can do.

02/09/2025

10/11/2024

Profoundly grateful to the ASPN for this opportunity to travel and learn from some of the giants treating brachial plexus birth injury. I am in awe of the past recipients of this award and feeling very lucky to be counted among them. This upcoming year I will be able to work with and Dan Zlotolow at the Philadelphia Shrine and Tom Quick in the UK thanks to the support of the ASPN. I can’t wait to share what I learn from them with my fellows and trainees.

07/23/2024

Radial longitudinal arrest (also called radial dysplasia and formerly called radial club hand) is the name we give to this condition: where one of the two bones in the arm (the radius) is shorter than normal, or missing. This condition doesn’t always have to be treated, but for patients or parents who want an operation, I move the hand to the end of the arm. This can be helpful so that the fingers are better positioned to reach things. This is type of operation is called centralization. I also rebalance some tendons to help hold the hand in its new position. There are many different ways to do this operation, and unfortunately none of them seem to keep the hand perfectly straight. For this young boy I used a newer technique that may be better at keeping the hand at the end of the arm. It is called a distal ulnar bifurcation arthroplasty. You can swipe to see some X-rays! For this in the know, this is a Bayne 4 radial longitudinal deficiency, treated as described by Ya-chao and others in a recent article. I also used a bilobe flap for soft tissue rearrangement. You can swipe further to see the fibrous anlage, persistent median artery, and radial displaced median nerve that are among the variants seen in this condition. This patient required an external fixator and will undergo pollicization at a later time.

06/22/2024

Healing is a process. This patient had an infection in his bone after a fracture. In order to help him, I moved some of the skin and fat from his hip to cover the wound and provide healthy tissue to help the bone heal. This is called a free flap. I was recently able to provide a small scar revision to make this look even nicer for him! I love using this particular flap from the hip, called a SCIP flap, because it is so thin and such a nice match to the skin on the leg. Also, the part of the body that I remove the tissue from is easy to hide under clothing and swimsuits. I will be demonstrating how to do this flap this year at the .flap.course which is also the same place where I learned how to do this flap from the master 🙏🏻.