Tattoos have become very popular in the last twenty years or so. It has become fashionable to show your personality and lifestyle to others by means of tattoos which are unique to you. More people from teenagers to those in their forties, have had tattoos done than at any previous time. Tattoos used to be common to only on a few types of people such as seamen. Now people in every walk of life are taking the leap and getting a tattoo. Sometimes it is merely decorative but in many cases the tattoo expresses the lifestyle of the person bearing it.
It is no surprise that as years go by many people regret having been tattooed. They may have come to dislike the design or it may have been a poor quality tattoo. Whatever the reason may be they would now like to have it removed. It is of course very difficult to remove tattoos which are made by injecting ink droplets deep under the surface of the skin. Removal can be an expensive proposition since only a surgeon is qualified to do this work properly. Because of this high cost many will elect just to suffer with the presence of the tattoo, and forget about trying to remove it. Men in particular often decide to just grin and bear it, and wish that they had not been so stupid in the first place. Women more often tend to go for removal, since they have possibly come to regard the tattoo as a disfigurement.
Dermabrasion which, as the name suggests, is abrasion of the skin, is one way to remove tattoos. The surface of the skin is simply abraded down below the depth of the tattoo, and then left to heal. This involves removal of a thick layer of skin, and can be quite painful unless a local anaesthetic is used. Skin grafting is another method of removing tattoos.
Here a patch of skin is taken from another area of the body, and after removal of the tattooed skin, it is grafted in place. This requires a skilled dermatological surgeon to do the work safely and properly. A local anaesthetic will be used. There are then two areas of skin which have to heal. This is a complicated and difficult procedure, and there is always risk of infection afterwards. The last method, and that which is most commonly used these days, is laser removal of the tattoo.
A high powered laser beam is used to break up the ink, under the skin, into tiny fragments which will be removed naturally by the body. This also can be a painful process and is usually done with the aid of a local anaesthetic. It is very effective however when done by someone who is skilled in this type of work. So there you have it. You can have a tattoo removed at considerable cost and with some pain involved. The best idea is to think very carefully before getting a tattoo in the first place.
