I Regret My Tattoo: Can You Help?

New tattoos are fun to look at and are a great way to express yourself — but what happens when you severely regret your tattoo down the road?

The good news is that technology allows the team at Meridian Plastic Surgery in Meridian, Mississippi, to remove tattoos with state-of-the-art lasers. If you have a tattoo that you need removed as soon as possible, Dr. Lee Thornton and Dr. Mark Elliott provide you with fast and efficient tattoo removal services.

What is laser tattoo removal?

Tattoos are designs that a tattoo artist permanently embeds in your skin with ink. The ink penetrates the top few layers of your skin, providing you with an art design that lasts forever.

However, if you're at the point where you no longer want your tattoo, you do have options. Laser tattoo removal is a highly successful treatment for getting rid of an unwanted tattoo.

Several different types of lasers are effective at removing tattoo ink. Laser tattoo removal is the best treatment option, as it's highly effective and well-tolerated by most people.

Our team uses lasers to remove tattoos because it's safer than other methods like surgical removal. It's also minimally invasive and can treat various ink colors, which were hard to get rid of in the past.

You may need several laser treatments to get rid of your tattoo thoroughly. However, it's still a better option than surgical removal or dermabrasion, which has unpredictable outcomes and results.

How laser tattoo removal works

When you're ready to remove your tattoo, our team evaluates the colors and size of the image to determine the best course of action with the laser.

Tattoos are permanent because they contain thousands of ink particles too big for your immune system to eliminate. Lasers emit intense energy pulses, which heat the ink particles and break them apart.

Once the laser breaks up the ink particles into smaller increments, your skin's immune system can effectively remove them from your body. It's not a fast process, and it may take several treatments to notice a significant change in the size and color of your tattoo.

Before our team begins the tattoo removal, we give you a pair of protective goggles to shield your eyes from the laser. We then test a small portion of your skin with the laser to determine the strength needed for your specific tattoo and skin tone.

If you're sensitive to pain, we can apply a topical anesthetic to make the process less uncomfortable. Each session varies in time, depending on the size of your tattoo and the colors involved.

After the session, we apply a protective ointment on the treatment area and cover it with a bandage to keep it clean while you heal.

Can all types of tattoos be removed?

With today's laser technology, we can remove almost every type and color of the tattoo. However, many factors play into the success of your tattoo removal, including:

• Your overall health
• The size of the tattoo
• Specific colors in the tattoo
• Where the tattoo is on your body
• How deep the ink is in your skin
• Medications you take

Black ink can absorb all of the laser energy, which makes it the easiest color to remove from a tattoo. We can still remove other colors as well, but it may take a few more treatments for your immune system to remove them.

With each laser treatment session, you should notice that your tattoo lightens after the healing period. While most tattoos are almost entirely gone, you may have light scarring or discoloration in your skin after a successful laser tattoo removal.

If you need tattoo removal, don't hesitate to call our office at 601-693-7742 to schedule a consultation with Dr. Thornton or Dr. Elliott. You can also request an appointment on the website.