Tattoos are basically permanent drawings or designs made in the skin. They are created when pigment is implanted in to the middlemost layer, known as the dermis. Historically in the past, & still today among amateur tattoo artists, the pigment was inserted by pricking the skin with handheld needles that were coated with ink. These days, professional tattoos artists, however, use an electric tattoo machine whose needle tips are coated with the selected pigment. There's as lots of as 100 different colored inks to select from. The needles hammer up & down in to the skin with a motion much like that of a sewing machine & drive the pigment down in to the desired locations to generate what amounts to true works of art on a canvass of skin.
At time, the mention of the word tattoo conjured scary images of gang members, hardened convicts, right wing hate groups, & strange religious cultists. That picture changed, however, as tattoos burst in to mainstream Americana in the work of the past0 years. The presence of about thousand tattoo parlors nationwide attests to their sizable popularity, among young people. &, it is estimated that greater than0 million Americans possess at least tattoo.
With the passage of time, not everyone remains happy with their foray in to body art. Perhaps as lots of as half of all individuals sporting tattoos grow to regret their youthful indiscretion. What appeared chilled & "in" on a forearm at age sixteen can show a hindrance to getting hired as an airline stewardess at age twenty-six. & a soaring eagle with its wings spread wide & coursing up the side of the neck may look macho at seventeen, but altogether unacceptable to a conservative Wall Street brokerage firm at age twenty-seven. &, of work, an "I love Sally" heart-shaped tattoo replete with Cupid's arrow spread over John's outer arm is not likely to go over well with the next love of his life, Jane.
Dermabrasion involved the use of a motor-driven wire brush to abrade the skin surface; Sal abrasion, the use of coarse salt crystals; cry therapy, freezing with liquid nitrogen; & medium-depth chemical peels, than application of caustic materials. Each of these techniques relied on stripping away the epidermis, the topmost layer of the skin, & exposing the pigment-laden dermis. Following exposure, the ink would be extruded as part of the healing system.
Surgical excision skirted the issue of dealing directly with the embedded pigment. In lieu, if the lesion were tiny, it was cut out entirely & the resulting wound sutured together. If it were sizable or its location difficult to work with, the removal was done in stages, allowing each surgical wound to heal before proceeding to excise another part. In general, these methods were successful at obliterating the tattoo, but at least some degree of scarring was inevitable. It was a trade-off--an acceptable scar in place a highly visible & undesirable tattoo.
Lasers & other light therapy devices, such as the Infrared Coagulator (IRC), are the treatments of choice today. Lasers work by emitting short, intense pulses of light that pass through the skin & target the ink. The energy from the laser light fragments the sizable particles of tattoo pigment enabling the body's natural immune process to more basically scavenge the pigment & carryover it away. This system usually takes several weeks, & multiple treatment sessions are often necessary to accomplish maximal clearing.
Since black pigment absorbs all wavelengths of light, it is ironically the simplest pigment to remove. Colors, such as green, do not absorb as well, & sometimes a variety of lasers, with varying wavelengths, are needed to effectively treat a multicolored tattoo.
Potential complications include permanent scarring, temporary or permanent loss of pigment or excessive pigmentation. Fees for laser treatments may range from $1000-$3000 or more, depending on the number of treatment sessions necessary, and the size, shape, colors, & location of the particular tattoo.
IRC makes use of non-laser infrared light to heat the area containing the pigment. It is speedy & straightforward to perform, and usually requires fewer treatments than lasers. Most tiny tattoos can be treated successfully in to sessions. IRC's efficacy also does not depend on the particular color of the pigments involved. For these reasons, it is my favorite process for dealing with tiny tattoos.
The procedure is speedy and simple. The area is first numbed with local anesthesia. Next, short pulses of infrared light are directed at the tattoo in a grid like fashion, leaving tiny spaces between each treated site. Since each burst of energy is a fraction of second, a whole treatment session requires only a couple of minutes to complete. It is within the work of the next few weeks, as they wound heals, that the pigment is extruded.
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