Our Team
Vincent Hentz, MD
Chief, Hand and Upper Limb Service
Division Chief, Plastic and Hand Surgery
Director, Hand Clinic
Dr. Hentz received his Bachelor of Science degree from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1964. He then attended the University of Florida where he received his MD degree in 1968. Following this, he completed his general surgery residency training at Stanford in the Department of Surgery in 1968 to 1971.
From 1971 to 1974 he completed his plastic surgery residency training in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Stanford. Dr. Hentz served as a Hand Fellow at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University from 1974 to 1975.
Dr. Hentz has won numerous research awards including the Veterans Administration Merit Review RR&D Award in 1979-present, ASPS/PSEF research grant in 1980, Biomedical Research Grant, Department of Surgery at Stanford, ASPS/PSEF research grant in 1983, American Society of Surgery for the Hand research grant from 1981-1993.
Currently, Dr. Hentz is a Director of the American Board of Plastic Surgery. He is the author of numerous textbooks, and is Past-President of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand.
Dr. Hentz is Board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. His subspecialty interests include hand and upper extremity surgery.
Amy Ladd, MD
Professor, Orthopaedic Surgery
Prior to joining Stanford in 1990, Dr. Ladd graduated from SUNY Upstate Medical University in 1984 and completed an orthopaedic residency at University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1989. Dr. Ladd also completed the Harvard combined hand fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital & Boston Children's Hospital in 1990.
The American Board of Orthopaedics has Board Certified Dr. Ladd in both hand surgery and orthopaedic surgery.
Dr. Ladd is the Chief of the Children's Hand Clinic at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford and a past Chief of the Hand and Upper Extremity Section, Dept. of Surgery at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center.
She specializes in orthopedic surgery and pediatric hand and upper extremity surgery. Her sub-specialties include hand, elbow, and shoulder surgery, and her clinical interests include pediatric hand problems, wrist fractures, and injuries and disorders of the hand and upper limb. She has also served as the medical director for two large FDA multicenter trials on novel treatment of distal radius (wrist) fractures.
Dr. Ladd is the Stanford Hand Fellowship Director, and director of resident and medical student education for the hand and upper limb service.
She was awarded the American Society for Surgery of the Hand's Bunnell Traveling Fellowship in 2000, its prestigious honor bestowed upon a young investigator.
She has been awarded several private and federal grants to pursue her research, with a particular recent emphasis on integrating multimedia in medical education, and how high resolution imaging of human anatomy (CT, MRI, and photography) will provide new tools in diagnosis and treatment for medicine of the future.
Dr. Ladd also seeks functional and cosmetic improvements to congenital anomalies of the upper limb, with a particular interest in understanding how such anomalies occur. Osteoporosis as it relates to complex and malunited wrist fractures is also a current research interest.
She has focused on how bone graft substitutes can promise better treatment for orthopaedic problems, and restoring limb function to paralyzed patients with spinal cord injuries.
James Chang, MD
Hand and Microvascular Surgeon
Program Director, Plastic Surgery
Dr. Chang graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences with joint degrees in Biology and Economics. He spent a year as a lecturer in English at the Beijing University of Science and Technology in Beijing, Peoples Republic of China .
Following this, he graduated from Yale Medical School with Alpha Omega Alpha and Cum Laude honors. From 1991 to 1993, he was a Sarnoff Laboratory Research Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Michael R. Harrison and Michael T. Longaker at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. He then completed a residency in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Stanford.
Dr. Chang was Clinical Instructor of Orthopedic Surgery and Hand Fellow at U.C.L.A. Medical Center from 1999-2000. He is currently Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Stanford. He is also an Attending Surgeon at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Dr. Chang is Chief of the Section of Plastic Surgery at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Director of the Plastic and Hand Surgery Laboratory. In addition, Dr. Chang is Residency Program Director in Plastic Surgery at Stanford.
His research interests include Modulation of Transforming Growth Factor-Beta in Scarless Flexor Tendon Wound Healing, and Tissue Engineered Tendon Grafts in the Hand. He has expertise in Molecular Biology techniques and their applications in Plastic Surgery Research.
Dr. Chang is the recipient of numerous grants from the Plastic Surgery Educational Surgery Foundation, the American Association of Hand Surgery, the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons, and the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. He has also received a three-year Federal Merit Review Grant.
His main surgical interests are reconstructive surgery of the hand and extremities including microsurgical reconstruction. He also has interest in pediatric hand and microsurgery, and post-oncologic microsurgical reconstruction.
Jeffrey Yao, MD
Hand and Microvascular Surgeon
Dr. Yao joined the Orthopaedic Surgery Department at Stanford in 2005.
He graduated from Cornell University Medical College in 1999. His Orthopaedic Surgery residency was completed at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine / NSUH-LIJ Health System in New York in 2004, where he was voted the Surgical Intern of the Year in 2000 and the Orthopaedic Surgery Resident of the Year in 2001. He completed the Hand and Upper Extremity surgical fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and the Philadelphia Hand Center in 2005.
Dr. Yao has clinical training and interest in the treatment of disorders of the entire upper extremity/limb, including the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder. He is specifically trained in the minimally-invasive and arthroscopic treatment of common upper extremity problems including fractures, arthritis, tendon and ligament injuries and nerve compression disorders.
His research interests include the evolution of arthroscopic and minimally-invasive surgical techniques for the management of common upper limb disorders. He is also involved in utilizing stem cells in the treatment of tendon and cartilage injuries.
Dr. Yao has presented his research at numerous regional and national meetings and is active in the education of other surgeons, fellows and residents. He is a candidate member of the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American Society for Surgery of the Hand.
Emilie Cheung, MD
Assistant Professor, Shoulder and Elbow SurgeryDr. Cheung specializes in reconstructive procedures of the shoulder and elbow, including fractures, joint replacements, rotator cuff repair, cartilage and soft tissue injuries, and arthroscopic procedures. She completed her Orthopaedic Surgery residency at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. She completed her Fellowship in Shoulder and Elbow Surgery at the world renowned Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, MN.
Her research has focused on clinical outcomes following revision of total shoulder replacements, revision of total elbow replacements, anterior capsular stabilization for instability of the shoulder, and complications following shoulder and elbow reconstruction procedures. Her publications include those in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, Journal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, and the American Journal of Orthopedics. She has presented her work at regional and national orthpaedic surgery conferences, and has written various textbook chapters in the field of shoulder and elbow reconstruction. Her current research involves investigating localized osteoporosis in the upper extremity after arthroplasty.