The craze for tattooing continues to grow. However, 40% of French people want to get rid of it. Tattoo removal (by laser) is said to be easy (but 10 sessions may be required), inexpensive (but one session can cost € 300), painless (but an anesthetic cream is necessary), safe (but we do not know if the pigments inoculated and then dispersed are harmful or not harmful).

Before approaching the chapter of tattoo removal, we must understand what a permanent tattoo is. To persist, a tattoo must be done in the dermis, the second layer of the skin. Indeed, the first layer called epidermis is renewed in 2 to 4 weeks. A million cells disappear every day. A design attempted on the epidermis would disappear at best in a month. It is therefore necessary that the small needles impregnated with particles of animal or vegetable ink penetrate the dermis about 0,6 to 4 mm from the surface, depending on the area chosen (the epidermis does not have the same thickness everywhere). The dermis has a very dense structure: the pigments stay there in the bundles traced by the needles. Neither should they penetrate the hypodermis, the third layer, where the ink spreads out in spots due to lack of density.

But the skin, like all other organs, does not like wounds (from needles) or ink (which is a foreign body). The immune cells come into play after this attack by creating an inflammation which ensures the permanence of the tattoo.

We’ve been tattooing 5000 years and un-tattooing 5000 years. It is the progress of histology (the study of tissues) and animal experiments (today prohibited in the field of cosmetics) that put an end to methods of tattooing for a very long time ineffective and / or painful with their corollaries. technical difficulties and unsightly results. In the XNUMXth century, nothing had been found better than destroying the dermis with an emery cloth, a maneuver responsible for infections and unsightly scars. At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, we noticed that tattoos faded in the sun and we tried a kind of phototherapy (Finsen’s light); it is a total failure. Another method (called Dubreuilh) consists of a decortication. Let’s move on… Current techniques are all the same less barbaric.

Let us leave aside, the two logical possibilities of getting rid of your tattoo which are exposure to the sun (permanent tattoos all the same fade little by little in a few decades) and recovery by another tattoo, which can be a solution if it is the “image” that we want to delete. Consider the 3 methods currently used:

• Mechanical destruction by dermabrasion: mobilization of particles that will be evacuated to a dressing or into the blood or lymphatic networks;
• Chemical destruction: this is the peeling;
• The ablation or physical destruction of particles by laser. It is the most recent technique, the least painful and the least destructive for the skin. The laser passes through the skin, fragments the pigment molecules with different wavelengths, that is, it makes them small enough for them to be eliminated in the blood or lymph.

It should be noted that some tattoos are more difficult to erase depending on their size, location, thickness and colors (yellow purple white more encrusted).

There are 3 types of laser:

• The Q-Switch Nanosecond laser has been in use for 20 years. It is slow and quite painful, not very effective on colors;
• The Picosure Picosecond laser, effective on black and red mainly;
• The Picoway Picosecond laser equipped with three different wavelengths and therefore active on the following colors: black, red, purple, green and blue. “The most effective, the fastest – fewer sessions – leaving few scars.

It is advisable to use an anesthetic cream half an hour before the session.

It takes 6 to 10 sessions, and 150 to 300 € per session.

Note: according to a German thesis on tattoo removal published in The Lancet (famous British medical journal): “no proof of the harmlessness of the substances used”.

The contraindications to tattoo removal are:

• the pregnancy ;
• an infection ;
• taking anti-coagulants;
• a marked tan.
  

From 1970, tattooing became popular. It is rather those under 35 who are fond of it, but all social classes are represented. It is about a movement of “individualization of the sense and the body” (David Le Breton) in a civilization of the appearance and the image. “I want to be unique”. Paradoxically, “I wear jeans” like the rest of the world. But, this indelible mark can become cumbersome in the event of a professional change or a careerist perspective, a romantic encounter, a break with one’s past (prison, army, group). You may also want to erase a failed tattoo or no longer adhere to the ideology or religion it evokes.

Some numbers:

• 40% of French people regret their tattoo;
• 1 in 6 French people hate it;
• 1 in 10 French people have tattoos;
• Among those under 35: 20% of French people have tattoos;
• In 20 years, the tattoo shops have gone from 400 to 4000.