| Tattoo Removal Lasers & Equipment
The key to a successful laser tattoo removal practice is a laser that can safely and effectively address your patients' tattoos. Many of these tattoos will be made with black ink; many others will include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and other hues. Some will be words or names made with thin lines; others will be symbols with high density of ink. Some tattoos will be shallow in the skin; others will be deeply applied. Some tattoos are cover-ups of other tattoos, so you will be addressing one tattoo on top of another. Some have faded over 20 or 30 years; others were applied only days or weeks ago. Variations in tattoos can be significant, and identifying a laser that can remove all these tattoos is incredibly important.
Tattoo Removal Lasers
Several key features are common in all modern, high-end tattoo removal lasers systems:
1) Q-switching: lasers can produce high-energy pulses in an extremely quick pulse by applying a variable attenuator inside the laser's optical resonator. High energy pulses that last for only a tiny fraction of a second to heat the tattoo ink enough to shatter, but not so long that heat and damage is applied to the surrounding tissue. Tattoo removal lasers, unlike hair removal or other lasers, operate in the nanosecond (billionth of a second) range.
2) Correct wavelength(s): in order for the targeted tattoo ink to absorb energy, heat up, and shatter, the correct wavelength of light must be used. Another concern is the shatter the tattoo ink, but minimize damage to other chromophores in the skin (hemoglobin, melanin, etc.). Tattoo removal lasers use a variety of wavelengths, including the 1064nm, 532nm, 694nm, and 755nm to address a range of tattoos.
The gain medium in the laser (a crystal) determines the wavelength of the light produced. The Nd:YAG crystal is a very common lasing medium that can produce light with wavelengths 1064nm and 532nm, which are good at addressing black and red tattoos, in addition to a range of other colors. A key shortcoming of Nd:YAG lasers is that they are ineffective at removing blue and green ink.
The ruby crystal lases at 694.3nm, and this wavelength is extremely effective at removing a range of tattoo ink, especially blue and green ink. Given that this is a real weakness of Nd:YAG lasers, a combination Ruby and Nd:YAG laser has been long sought-after to allow a laser practitioner to remove every possible color of tattoo ink. A reliable and powerful new laser (the Astanza Trinity) combines Nd:YAG and Ruby technology and we have been thrilled to incorporate it into our clinics, laser college, and to our physician clients.
Finally, the alexandrite crystal lases at 755nm, and was designed to address black, blue, and green tattoo ink. A few lasers uses the alexandrite, but it is quite unreliable, difficult to achieve sufficient fluence to address many tattoos, and often fail to meet expectations around blue and green tattoos.
3) FDA Approval and its Limitations: It is amazing, but some practitioners purchase medical lasers on Ebay from China. These lasers are of course little more than over-priced pieces of illegal junk and have the potential to compromise patient safety. In every case that we've seen, they are completely ineffective as equipment to remove a tattoo.
That said, not every laser (or pharmaceutical!) that is approve or authorized for use is effective. Tattoo removal is a multiple treatment procedure - it's isn't magic where the tattoo is instantly gone. That does mean you'll be able to generate a strong revenue stream from a patient over a number of treatments, but you also want to make sure you've selected technology that will be effective. In our opinion, many popular tattoo removal lasers are underpowered and certainly lack the correct options and wavelengths to remove the tattoos you'll be treating in your practice. We'll help you find the right technology.
In our clinics and as part of our years of training practitioners, we've tried almost every laser on the market. We know what works and what doesn't. We are pleased to share with our colleagues our experiences in our clinics performing tens of thousands of laser procedures. As part of our laser consulting workshop, we make one or more lasers available for your use. We'll walk you through every relevant aspect of the technology and help you make a good decision on how to treat your patients.
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