The Ultimate Guide to Laser Tattoo Removal Toronto

Thanks to increased insight and development of laser technology, it’s now possible to remove undesirable tattoos, but it’s difficult to decide your first steps. This blog post is going to tell you how and where to do laser tattoo removal in Toronto, and help you decide what your best options are. Dive in for some in-depth information on how you can get rid of that tattoo from freshman year.

How Does Laser Tattoo Removal Work?

Everyone has done things that they regret and, unfortunately, some of those things are permanent. Drunken nights or bad artists can leave ink stains on our bodies that we may no longer want to see. This can be especially prevalent when you’re trying to work in a professional environment that is unaccepting of tattoos, or if you just want to move on. Luckily, technology has progressed enough that we are now able to remove tattoos from our bodies, and there are lots of options for laser tattoo removal in Toronto.

Good tattoo ink will contain metal particles, such as cobalt, nickel and chromium. Some professional pigments also are also vegetable-based, organic, or plastic-based. Pigments that use metals include white, violet, blue, green, and black. If you’re curious about the composition of tattoo pigments, check out this chart and breakdown of pigments and their effects. As time passes and tattoos are exposed to light, they begin to fade, some colours more rapidly than others.

The process of laser tattoo removal is reminiscent of getting a tattoo. A tattoo artist will puncture the skin with an electronic machine that moves a needle to puncture the skin at a rate of 50 to 3,000 times a minute, going about a millimetre into the skin into the dermis. The tattoo is seen through the outer layer of skin, the epidermis, but the cells of the dermis stably hold the ink in place.

Fairview uses laser tattoo removal in Toronto with short and intense pulses of light, much like short and intense bouts of a needle. These puncture through the first few layers of skin to the dermis, a deeper layer of skin where hair follicles are. In order for this process to work, the pulses need to heat ink particles and make them expand, and be quick enough that half of the particle will remain cool. The pressure caused by the hot vs. cold effect drives the ink to debris into smaller particles, a process called photothermolysis.

The energy emitted breaks down and fragments the tattoo’s pigment into smaller particles that are essentially dust, and white blood cells begin attacking the tiny ink debris. Although white blood cells eat at ink particles regardless of their size, for the most part, the blood’s defenders cannot grab onto the large particles and remove them entirely. The fragments are also absorbed into the lymphatic system, draining fluid from your body’s tissue into your bloodstream and filtered out by the liver.

Different lasers are used to remove tattoos, depending on the colours of the design. Blue and black inks are easier to remove, despite what common sense would think. Colours like yellow and green are the hardest to remove from the skin. Three lasers were developed and are used for laser tattoo removal in Toronto: the Q-switched Ruby, Alexandrite, and Nd: YAG. The latter can be used more effectively than the others to remove red, black and blue inks.

What Will My Body Go Through?

Laser tattoo removal can also hurt more than getting a tattoo, but if your practitioner gives you a numbing agent, it can be relatively painless during the removal session. Darker inks are easier to remove than coloured inks, so depending on the size and pigment of your tattoo, the pain may be more enduring.

Although the process sounds pretty simple, you’ll have to make quite a few appointments at Toronto’s laser tattoo removal clinic. It can take between one to two years for a tattoo to be fully removed, with appointments every 6 to 12 weeks in order to promote full healing and minimal scarring. Similar to the healing process of tattoos, baths and swimming should be avoided until the area has healed. The affected area will feel sunburned and may blister, but that is just part of the process. As for any other wounds, it is best to keep from picking at the skin to avoid infection and increased scarring. More information about the healing process can be found here.

There is also the concern of tattoo removal changing the pigment of your skin. Treatments can result in scar tissue, as with any operation, but the lasers are meant specifically to target and break down pigments. That being said, laser tattoo removal is more difficult for patients with darker skin tones. This is because, while the laser targets the pigment, it can also target the dark melanin, causing potential burns and hyperpigmentation on darker skin tones. This means that it’s much more complicated to do laser tattoo removal on darker skin tones, for a possibly undesirable effect.

What is My Best Option For Laser Tattoo Removal in Toronto?

At the end of the day, you may decide to do a combination of laser tattoo removal and tattoo coverup. Regardless, it’s important that you choose the right clinic to go to, especially with how widely available laser tattoo removal is in Toronto. It should be done by a dermatologist who has enough experience to know how to go about certain complications when it comes to patients because every case is unique. Sometimes, it is better to get the tattoo covered up instead of removed because of these complications.

The physician at Fairview’s Toronto laser tattoo removal clinic is Dr. Padma Jain, a certified cosmetic physician with 25 years of cosmetic dermatology experience and over 24,000 cosmetic surgeries under her belt. To learn more about Dr. Jain and her qualifications, you can take a look at her physician’s page here. To see the technologies available at the Fairview Laser Clinic, and how you can go about laser tattoo removal in Toronto, follow this link to start your journey.