Why Tattoos Are Permanent
When a tattoo is applied, a needle strategically embeds ink particles within the dermis, the skin’s deepest layer. Upon insertion, your immune system immediately sends bacteria eating cells called macrophages to remove the foreign ink particles from your body. However, due to the large size and deep placement of the ink particles, the macrophages are only able to remove small pieces of ink at a time. This slow and continuous removal process is carried out over the span of a lifetime, causing your tattoo to gradually fade and lose color but also allowing your tattoo to stay permanently trapped in your skin.
Laser tattoo removal assists your immune system and drastically speeds up the fading process by shattering the large ink particles into fragmented pieces that are small enough for the macrophages to fully engulf and naturally remove.
How Laser Tattoo Removal Works
Laser tattoo removal is the safest, most effective, nonsurgical method for removing unwanted tattoo ink. Tattoo removal creams are unable to reach the skin’s dermal layer where ink resides and often result in misleading pigmentation changes without any tattoo removal. Other methods like acid injections, salabrasion, dermabrasion, and excision are invasive procedures that are painful and often result in scarring.
During a treatment session, our PicoStar and EternityTSR lasers send multiple pulses of light energy into the skin to be absorbed by the ink particles. Each pulse from the laser uses a specific wavelength to target the different colors of ink in your tattoo. The laser specifically targets the tattoo ink particles without damaging any of the surrounding skin tissue. The absorption of light energy causes the large ink particles to shatter into tiny fragmented particles that are small enough to be naturally flushed out by your immune system.
Over the weeks following a treatment, your tattoo will heal and begin to fade. Each session with the laser targets the shallowest layer of ink and works its way down until each layer of ink is sufficiently shattered. Virtually every client requires multiple treatments to target the many layers of ink that make up a tattoo.
During your free consultation, one of our expert laser technicians will assess your tattoo and determine the number of treatments you will need based on a variety of factors. The age and location of your tattoo, type of ink used, different colors, and other factors are all used to determine the number of treatments your unique tattoo will need to achieve your desired results.