TATTOO REGRETS – dentrocasa magazine, September 2015

The enormous popularity and continuous diffusion of tattoos has progressively brought a percentage of people who regret them and require their removal. In Italy, it is estimated that about one and a half million people have at least one tattoo and of these more than one hundred thousand are minors. It is difficult to estimate how many people regret them, but it is certain that over ten thousand requests for removal of cutaneous decoration have taken place over the past year.
Tattoos are always done at a young age and often people get fed up with them or have to remove them for work, for example, when applying to law enforcement bodies.
Males are the most regretful due to work reasons or more simply because they no longer like the design. Women are more motivated by aesthetic reasons such as the fact that tattoo is no longer to their own taste or it is no longer fashionable or it is tied to moments of their life that they want to eliminate or simply because they want to make room for a new one.
For the removal of tattoos, we mainly use the Q-Switched Nd:YAG laser, which produces laser pulses that break up the coloured pigments of the tattoo, which are in turn reduced into particles so small that they can be disposed of by the body.
The laser beam recognises the colour so it is essential to use a laser of a wavelength suitable to hit the specific colour of the tattoo. In this regard, remember that some colours, such as yellow and green, are resistant because there is no laser with an adequate wavelength.
The treatment is performed under topical anaesthesia with application of an anaesthetising cream on the part to be treated 30 minutes before the session, which lasts depending on the extent of the tattoo. After the session, a medication is applied for a few days and sun exposure should be completely avoided for a few weeks. After thirty or forty days from the session, the treated skin will be completely reconstructed with evidence of a more faded colour tattoo and the patient is then ready to undergo a new treatment. The number of sessions depends on many factors such as colour, the type of pigment, the intensity of the colour itself, the depth in the context of the skin and the anatomical area of interest.