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Lisa Lattanza, MD, FAOA, FAAOS

Ensign Professor of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation
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Additional Titles

Chair, Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation

Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

Chief, Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital

Clinical Specialties

Hand Surgery, Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation + 2 more
Patients Treated
Child, Adolescent, Adult, Older adult

About

Titles

Ensign Professor of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation

Chair, Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

Positions outside Yale

Chief, Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital

Biography

Dr. Lisa Lattanza is the Ensign Chair of the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at the Yale School of Medicine. She obtained her medical degree at the Medical College of Ohio (now the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences). She did her internship at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, completed her residency in orthopaedic surgery at the University of Missouri Kansas City and did a fellowship in hand surgery at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons/Roosevelt Hospital. She did additional fellowship training in pediatric hand and upper extremity at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, Texas. She joined the faculty of UCSF in 1999.

Although Lattanza treats all conditions and traumatic injuries in the upper extremity, she specializes in post-traumatic and congenital reconstruction for pediatric and adult elbow problems, treating patients from around the country and across the globe. She is a world- renowned leader in patient-specific 3D surgical planning and technology for deformity correction. She utilized her expertise in this area when she led a team to perform the first elbow-to-elbow transplant in the world in 2016, transplanting a patient’s left elbow into his right arm to give him one functioning extremity after a devastating accident.

Using 3D computing, she also pioneered a new classification system and approach to the treatment of Chronic Monteggia Fracture Dislocations in children. Lattanza frequently travels to Nicaragua and other countries on mission trips to perform hand surgery and is eager to expand upon the global initiatives already in place in the department.

Lattanza’s research interests include 3D surgical planning for deformity correction, elbow instability and other post-traumatic elbow conditions in children and adults, and diversity in orthopaedic surgery, specifically the underrepresentation of women.

When she began her appointment at the School of Medicine in September 2019, she became one of only two current female chairs of orthopaedics in the U.S. In 2009, she co-founded the Perry Outreach Program to increase exposure of high school girls to orthopaedic surgery and biomechanical engineering. Now known as the Perry Initiative, the program is named after Lattanza’s mentor, Jacquelin Perry, MD, who was one of the first women orthopaedic surgeons in the country. It began with 18 high school girls in San Francisco and has now reached over 17,000 high school, college, and medical students across the country. Lattanza’s research has shown that young women who complete the program are applying and matching to orthopaedic surgery residencies at a rate of about 24%, compared to the national average of about 14%. Her goal is to reach 30% within the next three years.

Lattanza has received numerous awards for both her clinical care and outreach efforts. She received UCSF’s Compassionate Physician award in 2013 and Exceptional Physician Award in 2014, the Jefferson Award for Community Service in 2014, and has been ranked by her peers as a Bay Area Top Physician for multiple years. In addition, she received the Diversity Award from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in 2021. She was also chosen as the Medical University of Ohio Distinguished Alumni in 2024. In addition to her other leadership roles, she served as president of the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society in 2017 and is active in the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, and the American Orthopaedic Association.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Fellow
Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital (1999)
Fellow
Pediatric Hand and Upper Extremity (1999)
Resident
University of Missouri Kansas City (1998)
Intern
Harbor UCLA Medical Center (1994)
MD
Medical College of Ohio (1993)
BS
Bowling Green State University

Research

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Lisa Lattanza's published research.

Publications

Featured Publications

2024

2023

2022

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • honor

    2021 Diversity Award

  • honor

    San Francisco Magazine Top Doctor

  • honor

    Marin Magazine Top Doctor

  • honor

    Exceptional Physician Award

  • honor

    Jefferson Award for Community Service

Clinical Care

Overview

Lisa Lattanza, MD, is the chair of Yale Medicine Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation and specializes in surgical reconstruction of pediatric and adult elbow problems, including those that are congenital or caused by trauma.

Dr. Lattanza is a world-renowned leader in personalized 3D surgical planning to correct upper extremity deformities. “Many bony deformities in orthopaedic surgery lend themselves to virtual surgical planning,” she says. “We capture images on a CT scan and run it through specialized software to create 3D images we can manipulate. We can plan our surgery before ever making a cut.”

This technology, Dr. Lattanza says, is the future. “Before virtual surgery, we were measuring from a regular X-ray in 2D and making assumptions about 3D objects—the bones. There is a lot of room for error with this. We are still mostly using off-the-shelf implants. Even though the technology exists for personalized implants, it is not widely approved. Eventually though, the days of pulling big trays of metal implants off the shelf will be gone—all patients will need is the one that has been 3D printed specifically for them, and that fits them perfectly,” she says. “We are already doing this and plan to build on it.”

An athlete through college, Dr. Lattanza started her career as a physical therapist at a sports medicine group before deciding to pursue medical school. “I was totally enamored by the musculoskeletal system and was on a singular path to become an orthopaedic surgeon,” she says. “From there, I knew I wanted to be really good at one thing instead of being OK at a lot of things.”

After a rotation at a pediatric hospital, where a hand surgeon was treating a child born without a thumb, Dr. Lattanza knew her path. “In this procedure, you take the index finger, shorten it, rotate it, move all the muscles, tendons, nerves, and blood vessels around, so that the index finger becomes the thumb and you restore the ability to pinch and grasp,” she explains. “I thought there couldn’t be a cooler operation. And restoring that lost function, for me, was more rewarding than reconstructing an ACL tear. That’s when I decided to become a hand and upper extremity surgeon.”

Dr. Lattanza’s research interests also include diversity in orthopaedic surgery, specifically the underrepresentation of women. She co-founded a nonprofit organization, the Perry Initiative, which exposes high school girls to orthopaedic surgery and biomechanical engineering and female medical students to the field of orthopaedic surgery. The Perry Initiative has over 14,000 participants in 54 cities; about 21% of their graduates choose and match into orthopaedic surgery residencies.

Clinical Specialties

Hand Surgery; Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation; Shoulder and Elbow Orthopedic Surgery; Pediatric Orthopedics

Fact Sheets

Yale Medicine News

Get In Touch

Contacts

Academic Office Number
Appointment Number
Clinical Inquiry Number
Mailing Address

Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation

P.O. Box 208071

New Haven, CT 06520-8071

United States

Administrative Support

Locations

  • Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation

    Academic Office

    47 College Street

    New Haven, CT 06510

  • Patient Care Locations

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