Roy A. Meals, M.D.
Board Member
Roy A. Meals is a clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Meals has been a hand surgeon at UCLA since 1979, serving as chief of the hand surgery service from 1979-1993. He is also Deputy Editor for the Journal of Hand Surgery, and is a past-president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. Dr. Meals trained in orthopedic surgery at John's Hopkins Hospital, followed by a hand surgery fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, and holds a certificate of added qualifications in hand surgery from the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery.

Dr. Meals love for working with hand patients started with an interest in working with his hands. As a young boy, he had a full carpentry shop at his disposal and spent most of his time making and fixing things. Then, while in medical school, several things became clear for him. First he was fascinated by the anatomy of the hand. He was continually amazed by its compactness and versatility. Later, he discovered an aptitude for spatial relationships so that looking at AP and lateral x-rays or visualizing the three-dimensional construct of the hand came easily for him. His interests and skills drew him quite naturally to the specialty of hand surgery.

Dr. Meals has enjoyed the professional collaboration of working with many outstanding CHTs, especially with difficult clinical problems requiring extensive scar modeling as with rheumatoid MP arthroplasties or tendon transfers for radial nerve palsy. He finds it rewarding to see a well-performed surgery slowly develop into an excellent result with which the surgeon, therapists and especially the patient are pleased. He feels this is the best example of tricking biology to our own ends.

Dr. Meals has served as the Physician Member of the HTCC Board of Directors since his election in 1996.