Tattoos are a great way to symbolize and display meaningful events in our lives. As can be seen on the numerous TV reality shows like Miami Inked and others, tattoos can be beautiful and emotional at the same time. Tattoos are also permanent, so what happens if you change your mind? What if you end up going through a divorce and no longer want to see your ex’s name tattooed to your arm or elsewhere? What if you got a tattoo while drinking and regretted it the next day? Well, now there are methods that work to remove those unwanted tattoos.
There are a few methods for tattoo removal and most are performed in a dermatologist or plastic surgeons office – its much more expensive to remove the tattoo than it is to get it in the first place! One of these in office treatments is dermabrasion. This is not the more superficial version termed microdermabrasion. Dermabrasion will use a diamond tipped abrader (similar to sanding the skin) to remove skin and the tattoo in the affected area.
Another method is a deeper medium strength skin peel like the TCA peel (trichloroacetic acid). Chemical peels like this will have the same effect as dermabrasion except that they burn out the affected region to the desired depth of the tattoo (dermabrasion basically abrades or sands it out). There are other skin peels which can and have been used for this purpose, but due to its synthetic origins and simplicity in use the TCA peel is the preferred chemical or skin peel for this purpose.