If you’ve ever been a member of a gang, gotten drunk enough to not remember what you did the night before, or simply thought at one time that permanently affixing the face of your favorite celebrity to your arm would be cool, you may have offered a word of thanks to the people who invented laser tattoo removal. Previously, tattoos were removed through extremely painful or inconvenient procedures, such as dermabrasion or the slicing away of the affected skin tissue, replacing it with skin excised from another part of the body. Rather than face the risks and discomfort associated with stripping away their tattoos, most people would choose just to deal with the consequences of having questionable markings on their skin. With the introduction of the latest advances in laser technology, they don’t have to live with the mistakes of their youth and momentary lapses in judgment any longer. Today’s tattoo-eradicating lasers are safe, non-invasive and very effective at discharging the task they were built to perform.

To understand how laser tattoo removal works, it is important to comprehend what a tattoo actually is, which is a design formed from the injection of thousands of ink particles suspended in the skin. Normally, small foreign particles that embed themselves in skin tissue are shed regularly when new skin layers replace older ones. Tatttoo particles, however, are too large to be disposed of through natural body processes. Lasers are used to heat these particles to a temperature that will cause them to break apart into smaller elements, which can then be absorbed by the body.

Destruction of the tattoo particles in a manner that does not cause damage to the surrounding tissue is a very precise technique, that can only be achieved through the use of Q-switched lasers. The particles have to heated to the right temperature instantly, but only long enough to cause fragmentation, or burning and scarring will occur. Since this is heavily dependent on the amount of light the tattoo particle will absorb, and different colors of pigment absorb different colors of light in varying proportions, removal of tattoos using certain colors requires the use of lasers emitting a color that is most highly absorbed by the pigment color. For example, green tattoo pigments absorb red light best, so a red laser will be used to remove green ink. As black absorbs all colors of light equally, it is typically the easiest to remove. It is interesting to note that the stronger Q-switched lasers are also highly absorbed by melanin, which produces tanned skin, so patients with non-white skin may suffer slight pigmentation changes.

Complete removal of a tattoo may require anywhere from one to ten treatment sessions, depending on the size and color of the tattoo, with each session lasting only a few minutes under a topical anesthetic. Sessions are spaced between four to eight weeks apart to give the body’s immune system sufficient time to absorb the fragmented particles, and to allow the skin to heal from the intense laser treatment. Each succeeding treatment penetrates deeper into the skin, destroying more ink particles in those layers, progressively lightening the tattoo until it fades altogether.

Right after a treatment session, a white discoloration normally appears on the skin surface, apparently the result of steam from the laser’s heat rising into the tissue. Pinpoint bleeding has also been observed due to the laser’s interaction with the pigment, which dissipates light waves into the skin. With the application of an antibiotic cream and light dressing, as well as limitation of exposure to the sun, these side effects usually vanish in a few days.