LIPOSUCTION CONFERENCE TACKLES WEIGHTY MEDICAL SUBJECT.

Byline: Andrew Bridges

Some will make you larger, some will make you smaller - and the body your mother gave you may not be the last you have at all.

Some of the world's foremost cosmetic surgeons gathered Friday at the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel for the World Congress on Liposuction Surgery.

The four-day confab on flab focuses on the the surgical removal of fat, a science and an art that is a relative newcomer on the medical scene.

``To learn about fat is to know it and to know fat is to love it,'' said Dr. Edmond Griffin, an Atlanta dermatologist who specializes in fat transplantation.

The conference, which ends Wednesday, covers a range of topics, including everything from liposuction disasters to the innovative use of ultrasound in fighting fat.

``In our work, the shapes are inside the patient's body and surgery turns them into something beautiful,'' said Dr. Julio Ferreira, an Argentine surgeon.

While diet and exercise may shrink fat cells, liposuction actually reduces the body's total number of fat cells - about 75 billion in an average human being.

In the roughly 2-decade-old field, only younger doctors have received formal training in liposuction while still in medical school or as residents. The rest learn during hands-on conferences - like the Ritz-Carlton congress, which ends with live surgical demonstrations today, Monday and Tuesday in Rancho Cucamonga.

In the world of cosmetic surgery, liposuction is among the most popular procedures, according to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, co-sponsor, with the American Society of Liposuction Surgery, of the conference.

In 1996, 226,744 people underwent liposuction - a 29 percent increase since 1994. By means of comparison, only 76,627 breast augmentation surgeries were performed in 1996, according to statistics provided by the Chicago-based academy.

As the procedures have been refined, liposuction has become less invasive.

``Many physicians never see these images,'' said Ferreira, as he flashed a series of slides during a press luncheon of a bloody, pre-liposuction, fat-reduction surgery done in the early 1970s.

While fat was once literally cut from the body, in modern liposuction it can be aspirated through incisions as small as a fraction of an inch, Ferreira said.

Many of the procedures can be done on an outpatient basis; Pasadena cosmetic surgeon Robert Yoho's book on cosmetic surgery is titled, ``A New Body in One Day.''

While the world of liposuction thrives on the before-and-after photo display, not all of it is for cosmetic purposes.

Dr. Pierre Fournier, whom conference co-chair Dr. Steven Nathanson called one of liposuction's fathers and pioneers, said as much as one-third of the U.S. population has a weight problem.

``Never in my life did I see so many obese people,'' Fournier said.

And with extra weight comes a host of weight-related health problems. That is where the field of megalipo therapy - the removal of 10 or more quarts of fat from a patient - steps in, Fournier said.