Laser Tattoo Removal - Technique and Benefits

Laser treatments are the one of the most popular and effective skin treatments in recent years. It helps to treat numerous skin imperfections, make skin younger and healthier, remove wrinkles, dark spots and even unwanted tattoos. Laser skin treatment can be used almost for all the body areas, including sensitive eye and mouth areas.

There are many people who have unwanted body design such as tattoo. In the previous years tattoos could be removed with such methods as dermabrasion and excision, but these methods are painful and ineffective and can cause scarring. New laser techniques allow to get rid of tattoo with almost no side-effects.

Laser skin treatment techniques were improved to remove tattoo pigments in the deeper skin layers, thereby lasers are also able to remove unwanted tattoos. In this case, the beam of laser light is customized in the way to pass top skin layers without any damage to the skin and destroy tattoo pigments in the deeper layers. The absorption of laser beam energy by tattoo pigment leads to the fragmentation of the pigment and its further removing from the organism. In most cases there is no need to apply anesthesia, but depending on the tattoo location and patient's pain threshold, the doctor may use topical anesthesia or painkiller injections.

The radiation is selectively absorbed by tattoo pigment, which means that different inks absorb radiation of the certain wavelength. Multiple inks present in tattoos require the use of several wavelengths during the treatment. Because of the different size, depth and chemical formulas of ink pigments in each case tattoo is unique. Depending on the size of tattoo and color of the pigment the person may need different number of laser treatments, but in any case complete tattoo removal requires multiple treatments.

The common temporary after-effects of laser tattoo removal are sunburn feeling that stays for a few days after the treatment, superficial skin flaking, redness or swelling that stays for a few weeks.

Sometimes tattoos may react unexpectedly to the laser because chemical formulas of the inks are very variable or the inks can be placed into the layer of deep dermis. There are cases when lasers determined to destroy black or dark blue pigment can also influence the dark pigment melanin which is located in epidermis, so the dermatologist should be very careful while determining the wavelength of laser radiation. Laser energy absorption of melanin may lead to its thermal damage and further dyspigmentation of the skin. The risk of dyspigmentation is quite high especially for the people with dark skin tone.