Regretting your tattoo?

 

If you now regret having a tattoo and would like to remove it, then help is at hand. Laser tattoo removal is a safe and effective treatment that makes tattoos of all sizes and colours simply fade away.

These are the following factors that influence each person's treatment:

 

1-Quantity of ink used
2-Depth of the ink placed in the skin
3-Type of ink used (Indian ink, Thai ink etc.)
4-Location on the body
5-Age of the tattoo
6-Colors inks used
7-Size of Tattoo

 

 

About Your Skin

 

 

Skin Types

In 1975, Thomas B. Fitzpatrick, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, developed a classification system for skin typing. This system was based on a person's complexion and responses to sun exposure.

Fitzpatrick Skin Types are:-

 

Type I: Always burns; never tans

 

Type II: Burns easily, tans minimally

 

Type III: Burns moderately; tans gradually to light brown

 

Type IV: Burns minimally; always tans well to moderately brown

 

Type V: Rarely burns; tans profusely to dark brown

 

Type VI: Never burns; deeply pigmented

 

As well as the skin type, other factors that should be taken into account are genetic disposition (eye colours, hair colour, freckles). Another caution is that if your nationality is Afro-American you may be prone to hypo-pigmentation (loss of proper skin colour). An indicator that is taken into consideration is reaction to sun exposure and tanning habits (artificial sunlamps or tanning creams).

     

Amateur or Professional?

Professional tattoos tend to have up to or exceeding 12 layers of ink, typically 1 layer is removed with each treatment. However, amateur tattoos can be removed quicker in some cases with as little as 2 treatments!

 

Pale or Dark Skin?

Skin types vary from type 1 (pale) to type VI (deeply pigmented)

Clients with pale skin usually see the best results. Smaller, older tattoos that are located on the arms, chest, buttocks or legs are the easiest to remove.

Clients with darker skin require a more cautious approach and may experience hypo pigmentation; in most cases this is a short-term effect and full pigmentation returns within a few months.

Therefore more sessions may be necessary to minimize the risk of hyperpigmentation (excessive colour) or hypopigmentation (excessive fading).

Keloid scarring is also a possibility for darker-skinned patients. If your skin is prone to these types of scars, a patch test should be performed.

Treatment of these patients will start more cautiously and with lower fluency (light energy) pulses followed by careful evaluation of how the skin is reacting.

 

Skin Colour

For darker skin types, the actual colour of the skin is important, as this is caused by natural pigmentation which must not be 'removed'.  If the ink colour is too close to the natural skin colour, total removal may not be possible. 

 

Scarred Tattoo

We are getting more and more people coming in after having a different type of treatment elsewhere (where they inject the skin with an acid like formula to push the skin up to the surface), however the people that are coming in to us have bad scarring on the area that was treated previously.  In this case we can only work around the already scarred tissue as there is nothing to work on once the tissue has been scarred. There are things you can use to help the scarring including Bio Oil or just pure Vitamin E oil over the scarred area.

 

 

Why choose Erasure?

As we are very successful with our clients and strive to help as many people as we can we offer a FREE consultation* competitive pricing and individual advice. A free test patch will also be given before treatment* so you can see what it feels like and decide whether you want to go ahead with the treatment. We also supply you with all the information you need to decide about treatment from costs to estimated sessions required.

 

How Tattoo Removal Works

In order to have a good understanding of how laser tattoo removal works it's important to understand how the tattoo is made to make it permanent.

 

How tattoos are inserted

Tattoos are made using a motorized needle, this needle pricks holes in the upper epidermal layers, and at the same time this needle injects the ink into those holes that ink then connects together with the skin molecules which makes the tattoo permanent.

 

What does the laser do to the ink?

The ink in your tattoo gets broken down with a high energy burst of light with lasers. The length of time the light is pulsed for gives a very accurate way of delivering an exact amount of energy.

The high energy light breaks up the ink particles into tiny fragments which are taken up by the macrophage scavenger cells in the skin, and carried away by the body's waste removal systems.

 

Where does the ink go?

As the pigment is carried away by the immune system very slowly, the tattoo gradually disappears. Simple tattoos may dissolve after about three treatments, but usually a minimum of several treatments are required. This can be more for very large and complex coloured tattoos. Tattoos can be faded down in preparation for cover up work in a very short number of treatments. The darker colours respond more quickly which means your cover options are wider than simply a larger darker tattoo. 

 

*Free initial consultation and test patch when first treatment booked and paid in advance of medium size and above, or if you are screened out from treatment due to medical history or other factors found during the assessement.