Tired of Your Old Ink? Consider Laser Tattoo Removal

People get tattoos for a variety of reasons, ranging from showing affection for a loved one to making a bold political statement to reflecting cultural heritage. Polls indicate about 30% of adults in the United States, or some 80 million people, have a tattoo.

However, not everyone stays in love with their tattoos, and many people regret getting them in the first place. That leads to an entire market devoted to safe tattoo removal.

At Associates in Family Medicine, Dr. Mahshid M. Hamidi and our staff offer laser tattoo removal for our patients who want to ditch their ink for whatever reason. If you fall into this category, here’s what you need to know about the process.

How is a tattoo applied?

Tattoos should be applied by a licensed and experienced tattoo artist to ensure you don’t develop any complications, such as an infection from a dirty needle.

The artist uses a needle that deposits ink particles in the dermis (middle) layer of the skin. The ink can be of any color, depending on what type of tattoo you want.

The ink particles are too large for your body to break down, which is what allows the tattoo to remain intact for so long. It also means that if you want to get the tattoo removed, it’s not a simple process.

In fact, until the 1990s, removing unwanted tattoos was quite painful and often created deep scars. Today’s lasers, though, have made removal safer, less painful, and easier to accomplish.

Laser tattoo removal technology

Today, practitioners use three types of lasers for tattoo removal:

Q-switched ruby laser (operates at 694 nanometers, or nm)
Q-switched Nd:YAG laser (operates at both 532 nm and 1064 nm)
Q-switched alexandrite laser (operates at 755 nm)

The different wavelengths of light are used to target the different colors found in tattoos.

A laser uses a focused light beam to break large ink particles into microscopic fragments. Once broken down, the ink is treated as a waste product by the body, and the lymphatic system flushes the particles away over time, causing the tattoo to fade.

Depending on the size, complexity, and color(s) of your tattoo, as well as how long ago you got it, you may need to have multiple removal sessions to clear it completely.

What you can expect at your tattoo removal sessions

During your removal appointment, we aim the high-intensity laser light pulses at the top layer of skin (epidermis), and they penetrate through to the dermis, where the ink is located.

The energy in the pulses heats up the ink particles, breaking them into fragments that are small enough for your body to remove safely and effectively.

The fragments are processed over time, since the immune and lymphatic systems can only handle so many fragments at once. This is one reason why you may need multiple sessions to achieve complete erasure. We usually recommend 6-8 weeks between sessions to eliminate all the fragments generated at the previous appointment.

You may feel some discomfort as the laser goes to work, but we manage that with numbing cream. We also advise you to keep the treated area clean, dry, and covered after the appointment and to make sure to avoid direct sunlight and swimming for a certain amount of time to prevent any complications.

If you’ve got a tattoo that doesn’t suit you anymore, don’t worry — Associates in Family Medicine can help with laser tattoo removal. Call our office in the Clairemont area of San Diego, California, at 858-565-6394 to schedule an appointment with Dr. Hamidi, or send us a message online. We also accept telehealth appointments.