Bio
Dr. Ladd is a fellowship-trained orthopaedic surgeon with board certification in hand surgery and orthopaedic surgery. She is the Chief of Stanford’s Chase Hand & Upper Limb Center and Chief of the Children’s Hand Clinic at Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.
Dr. Ladd is also the Elsbach-Richards Professor of Surgery and Professor, by courtesy, of Medicine (Immunology & Rheumatology) and Surgery (Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery), at Stanford University Medical Center.
As an experienced specialist in hand and upper extremity surgery, Dr. Ladd treats a wide range of conditions, including arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, Dupuytren’s disease, trigger finger, fractures, sports-related injuries, and more.
Research interests of Dr. Ladd include arthritis, musculoskeletal biomechanics, and improving patient outcomes, as well as sex/gender differences in musculoskeletal conditions. She is internationally renowned for her research on base of thumb (carpometacarpal - CMC) joint osteoarthritis, a common and debilitating disease endemic in post-menopausal women. In addition, she has developed instruments for evaluating 3D upper limb kinematics, including the golf swing.
Dr. Ladd has authored or co-authored more than 175 articles throughout the spectrum of hand surgery; biomechanics of elite performance, coordinated motion, and osteoarthritis; and general orthopaedic topics. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Hand Surgery, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Clinical Orthopaedics & Related Research, Hand, Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and many more publications. In addition, she holds over 30 patents, patent applications, and trademarks for technological innovations and advances related to hand surgery, arthritis, fractures, the golf swing, and musculoskeletal health.
Among her many honors and awards, Dr. Ladd’s peers named her one of the Best Doctors in America for 2 decades. She has won the Andrew Weiland award, the highest research honor for a hand surgeon, and the Emanuel B. Kaplan Excellence in Anatomy Award, both from the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. She has also won the Nicolas Andry Award for “significant contribution to musculoskeletal research” from the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons, and the Distinguished Clinician Educator award from the American Orthopaedic Association.
Dr. Ladd is a former board member of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and Chair of the academy’s Board of Specialties, and is the president-elect of the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons. As part of an initiative of the US Department of the Interior, she has provided volunteer services to the population of the Navajo Nation in Chinle, AZ. She also has delivered volunteer surgical care for children with hand conditions In Vietnam.
