COSMETIC SURGEONS CONVERGE ON SILICONE SHANGRI-L.A.

Byline: Steve Carney Daily News Staff Writer

Like pilgrims to Mecca, the top plastic surgeons of the world flocked to Los Angeles, the spiritual home of the breast implant and the tummy tuck.

The 15th annual scientific meeting of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery entered its second of four days Friday at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, with seminars on eyelash transplants, the finer points of chemical vs. laser skin resurfacing, wrinkles and migraine headaches, and the surgical treatment of frown muscles.

Although Southern California no longer has the market cornered in silicone, that's still the view from some corners of the world, according to Dr. Jan Saether and his technical assistant, Jesper Andersen, who came from Denmark to attend the annual meeting.

``I think the perception is, in Hollywood you tend to overdo it a little bit,'' Andersen said. ``You have the `Baywatch' syndrome and everybody thinks they have to be a size D.''

By contrast, Saether said, his Danish patients who get their breasts augmented simply want to look ``more natural.''

``They're not neurotic patients. It's not because they feel bad, but because they want to look better,'' Saether said.

The conference was in New Orleans last year, and will be in Orlando, Fla., in 2000, but some attendees thought Los Angeles was more appropriate a venue for this year's conference.

``Cosmetic surgery is absolutely huge here,'' said Sheri Mitchell, a service representative with Byron Medical, an equipment supplier in Tucson, Ariz.

``It's L.A., it's Hollywood,'' said Sarah Economidy, a sales associate for Byron Medical. ``You've got the stars, the models. You've got a lot of vain, plastic people here. Is it vain, or is it vein removal?''

The exhibit booths displayed the latest in the trade with Whitman's samplers of breast implants, bulge-taming girdles, nasal splints, flesh-colored facial bandages and table after table of gleaming stainless cannulas - the probes used in liposuction. Other vendors hawked lasers for skin surgery by demonstrating their products on produce, etching patterns on the epidermis of tomatoes, oranges and eggplant.

And the glossy literature made their pitches to the folks who abide wrinkles only in their linen suits: ``Healing the wounds of time,'' ``Erase nature's flaws,'' ``Crow's-feet should be for the birds.''

Tom Walling of United American Medical Co. in Tennessee demonstrated his innovative vibrating cannula by plunging it into a 10-pound ham. The machine hummed as it broke up and sucked in the other white meat.

Walling, 57, said he might just be on the receiving end of one of his machines someday.

``I'd like to get rid of this,'' he said, stroking the bulge underneath his chin. ``I'd like to get rid of the little chubby cheeks.

``If we can, we'd like to look younger,'' Walling said. ``It's just human.''

Pretty common, too.

According to the academy's figures, the number of cosmetic surgery procedures performed shot up 21 percent nationwide from 1994 to 1996, to 3,204,430 collagen injections, calf implants, chemical peels, nose jobs and other procedures.

``It used to be Beverly Hills was the mecca for plastic surgery, because everyone had plastic surgery,'' so the doctors there had the most experience and consequently attracted even more business, said Lars Isaacson, promoting a new wrinkle-busting laser treatment at the conference.

Now L.A., New York and South Beach in Miami are no longer the only display areas for taut flesh. In fact, one of Isaacson's customers is a well-known surgeon in Indianapolis, he said. ``Vanity is no longer coast-specific.''