Thursday, February 23, 2012

Preparing For Tattoo Removal Surgery

With an increasing demand for tattoos among young people in recent years, plastic surgeons also see an increase in patients seeking tattoo removal surgery. The reasons for this vary from patient to patient. Some tattoos may be poorly executed or placed in areas that interfere with the quality of the social or sexual life of the individual. In addition to this, tattoos can also cause infections or simply disturb the existence of an individual, particularly in adolescents, because of the message it transmits, which is no longer applicable for the person wearing the tattoo.
For tattoo removal there are a wide range of methods that can be performed in specialized clinics. Because tattoos are placed deep under the skin, methods such as dermabrasion and chemical removal will leave permanent scars that are unacceptable.
Surgical methods often used for removing tattoos are excision followed by suture, skin grafting or tissue expansion (placing a silicone balloon that is inflated with saline, creating excess skin that will be used in a two stage surgery to cover the defects resulting from tattoo excision). Scars do not always conform to current aesthetic standards, whereas additional tissue expansion is difficult to accept for a young person with an active social life.
Lasers or IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) devices are less effective in removing tattoos. Because of this, specialists have struggled to come up with new revolutionary devices for achieving the desired results. The newest and most modern method used is represented by the latest laser invention. It uses a high energy laser that is able to issue an instant wave to break and remove the pigment effectively even in pathologically altered cells.
The laser beam shatters very quickly (in approximately 6 ns) in the pigment and then part of the pigment is removed by. Macrophages are cells that remove foreign substances from the body through the lymphatic circulation. Even though the pigment is affected, any trace appearing on the body after this kind of intervention will fade away gradually. The tissues surroundings the area are not affected because they do not absorb the laser energy at that specific wavelength.
The two wavelengths that are most commonly used are of 1064 nm and 532 nm and help address a wide range of tattoo colors (black, blue, red and green, the latter being the most difficult to remove). The results depend on the substance used for making the tattoo, as well as the individual response of the patient's body. The minimum number of sessions required to completely remove the tattoo is usually between 5 and 7.

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