Do You Rue the Tattoo?
- Posted on: Aug 15 2018
Tattoos used to be the domain of sailors and pirates. No more. It’s estimated that 20 million Americans have a tattoo.
The problem is time and our skin. As our skin ages and loses collagen and elastin, it tends to sag, lose its elasticity, and becomes prone to wrinkling. That fierce dragon that adorns your shoulder could turn into a platypus once your skin sags and droops with age. And that rose down your arm could take on the look of a worn out tulip with a couple of decades of time.
Maybe you’d like to remove that tattoo. We provide removal of black-ink tattoos at Skin & Cosmetic Solutions.
How laser tattoo removal works
Tattoos formerly could only be removed with surgery (cutting out the tattooed skin) or dermabrasion (grinding off the tattooed skin). Both of those options left scars that could be as visually unpleasant as was the overstretched tattoo.
Today, lasers are effective for removing tattoos. Here’s how they do it.
The laser sends very short pulses of intense light onto the skin. This light passes through the top layers of the skin and is absorbed by the pigment in the tattoo. Once absorbed, the laser energy causes the tattoo pigment to fragment into smaller particles that are then removed by the body’s immune system.
You would think that the laser energy would damage the un-pigmented skin around the tattoo, but that doesn’t happen — the laser wavelengths are set to correspond only to the ink in the tattoos, leaving other skin unharmed.
How many treatments?
The number of laser sessions necessary to remove your tattoo depends on a couple factors. We currently only offer black-ink tattoo removal, so color differences aren’t an issue. But the depth at which the ink was placed and the makeup of the ink can vary by the tattoo. So, it’s hard to predict just how many sessions will fully remove your tattoo. Full removal can take up to six sessions, one every 4-8 weeks.
During treatment, we use an anesthetic cream for your comfort. Afterwards, you’ll need to apply antibiotic ointment to the area and keep it covered with a bandage.
Do you rue your tattoo? Call us at Skin & Cosmetic Solutions, (919) 876-9576, to make an appointment.
Posted in: Tattoo Removal
