Get into trouble because of beauty habits

Tattooing and piercing are considered trendy hobbies chosen by many people, but they forget that this habit will cause many health consequences.

Easy to do, many troubles

Ms. PHD (20 years old, Binh Thanh district) had red and swollen ears, yellow pus discharge, and fever after piercing. She was diagnosed with an ear piercing infection.

Ms. D. had two earlobe piercings, and this time she got another earlobe piercing. After two days of getting the piercing, Ms. D. felt pain in her earlobe, but thought this was a normal reaction after the procedure.

A doctor is explaining the ear anatomy to a patient.

After 1 week, she tried many ways to take care of the piercing area, but the pain in the ear did not decrease, and there were additional symptoms of swelling, redness, pus, heat, redness, and burning at the piercing site. Ms. D. went to a medical facility for examination.

Taking medical history, examining, and performing an ENT endoscopy, the doctors said the patient had an infected ear piercing and prescribed antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs for treatment, along with local antiseptics.

With the habit of tattooing that many people are choosing, according to doctors, tattooing is easy but when wanting to remove it, there are countless difficulties and health risks. Mr. LVB (32 years old, from Binh Thuan ) got his first tattoo 5 years ago, when he went to work in Africa.

Missing home and wanting to motivate himself to work, he tattooed his parents' portraits all over his back. After that, his work was not going well, and with the advice of his friends, he tattooed a dragon playing with clouds in black ink along his left arm to change his luck.

Before he could change his fate, his parents scolded him and almost disowned him when they discovered that their only son was tattooed. His parents were upset because their son was born fair and healthy, and tried to keep him without a single scar on his body, but now he was painting his body with blue and red ink. In B.'s hometown, most people with tattoos were considered bad people.

When picking up his children from school, going to the market, going out, etc., he often received unfriendly looks. Sadness turned into regret when his first daughter did not want to go to kindergarten because her friends ostracized her, saying that he and his father were bad people. He also could not get a job in the factory near his house, even though it was in his field of expertise, because of the "unwritten rule" of the investor not accepting people with tattoos.

Mr. B. regretted and wanted to remove the tattoo, but it was not simple. A beauty salon quoted a cost of 60 million VND to remove the tattoo on his arm alone, 6 times the cost of a dragon tattoo, but it did not guarantee that the ink would be completely removed.

Mr. B. had his tattoo removed once, the laser treatment was too painful, causing blisters and skin inflammation. At the same time, facing financial difficulties, Mr. B. temporarily gave up and accepted to wear long-sleeved shirts when going out.

As for HLQK (17 years old, Dong Nai), after getting a tattoo, he regrets it and has no choice but to go to the hospital once a month to regain his normal skin color.

Half a year ago, K. secretly got a tiger tattoo on his back, imitating his idol. Unexpectedly, the tattoo artist was inexperienced. After 6 hours of painful ink application, K. got an ugly, scrawled tiger tattoo with a skin infection that stretched from his shoulder to his waist.

K. was forced to tell his parents to go to the hospital to treat the infection. After waiting three months for the wound to heal and the ink color to stabilize, his parents took K. to a general medical facility in Ho Chi Minh City to have the tattoo removed.

Late regret

According to doctors, post-piercing infections are common among young people who have multiple piercings on their earlobes and earlobes. Piercing is a popular form of cosmetic enhancement.

Previously, the piercing location was usually the earlobe (this location does not have cartilage, so complications rarely occur), but nowadays, many young people often prefer to pierce in many locations related to the cartilage of the ear. The earlobe has soft tissue and fat, strong blood circulation, so piercing in this location heals quickly and is less likely to cause infection.

The earlobe and cartilage areas have thicker, harder tissue and less blood circulation. Piercings in these locations will take longer to heal. Infections of the ear cartilage can cause more serious problems beyond fever, bleeding and swelling, such as systemic infections that can affect the entire body if not treated promptly.

There are many causes of ear piercing infections such as: the piercing site is not properly sterilized; the piercing tool or earring is not sterilized; the piercing hole is not cleaned carefully after the piercing or touching the piercing repeatedly with unclean hands.

Some symptoms of piercing infection include: fever, pus, redness, swelling, itching, burning... If the infection (ear cartilage, auricle, earlobe...) is not treated promptly, it can cause abscesses, widespread infection causing cellulitis, chronic otitis externa, hearing loss...

Dr. Nguyen Trung Nguyen, ENT Center, Tam Anh General Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City recommends that when needed, people should choose an experienced, reputable and hygienic ear piercing facility. After piercing the ear, wash your hands thoroughly with soap or hand sanitizer before touching the piercing area, use a cotton swab soaked with saline to clean the piercing area twice a day.

Keep the earring in place until the wound has completely healed, which can take up to 6 weeks. Avoid swimming in pools, ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, etc., or even taking a bath after a new piercing. Do not apply any medication to the piercing without consulting a doctor.

If you experience symptoms of piercing inflammation, continuous bleeding after 2 days of piercing, swelling and redness of the piercing area that spreads, high fever, continuous yellow pus discharge, etc., you should see an ENT specialist for treatment instructions and to limit complications.

Regarding the arduous journey to remove tattoos, according to Dr. Quach Thi Bich Van, a dermatologist and cosmetic dermatologist at Tam Anh General Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, the number of tattoo removal cases here tends to increase gradually.

Currently, on average, hospitals and clinics receive about 130-150 tattoo removal requests per month, an increase of about 30% over the same period last year, and two-thirds of the customers are men.

A study published in the US National Library of Medicine, which involved 1,100 tattooed adults in the US, found that 18.2% regretted one or more of their tattoos, and those who regretted had their tattoos for longer. Additionally, 52.1% were interested in removing, covering, or correcting one or more tattoos. Currently, there is no survey in Vietnam that records this rate.

According to Dr. Van, the common point of people who remove tattoos is that they are all between the ages of 15 and 35. The most commonly removed tattoos are large, ugly, old, broken, faded; couple tattoos, names or portraits of ex-lovers; scary, strange tattoos, tattoos with negative meanings; tattoos in places that are difficult to cover such as the face, neck, nape, hands, feet or tattooed eyebrows, eyelids...

“The most common reason for tattoo removal is regret and worry that the tattoo will affect work, study, relationships, or is no longer suitable for the present,” said Dr. Van.

However, tattoo removal is much more complicated than tattooing. Accordingly, tattoo artists only take a few dozen minutes to complete a small, simple tattoo or a few days for a large, multi-colored, multi-effect tattoo. If the pain relief is good, it can be performed continuously, reducing the time of implementation and tattooing can be done anywhere as long as there is a tattoo tool.

On the contrary, if you want to remove a tattoo quickly and effectively, there is only one way: surgically removing this area of ​​skin. This is a major medical intervention, requiring you to go to a licensed medical facility, and may require anesthesia. This method, even if performed by a doctor, still carries the risk of infection and bad scarring after surgery.

Tattoo removal with pico laser technology is considered highly safe, as it precisely affects the target pigment with little damage to surrounding tissue, is highly effective, and rarely causes post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation. However, this method takes many months, many years, and the treatment cost is relatively high.

Each laser tattoo removal session needs to be spaced an average of 4 weeks apart to allow the skin time to recover, and for the tattoo ink particles to be collected and eliminated by white blood cells.

Using laser energy to impact tattoos also has certain side effects in the treated skin area. Therefore, in one irradiation, it is not possible to impact too large an area, Dr. Van added.

Large, complex tattoos with multiple colors and ink that penetrates deep into the dermis are more difficult to remove from the skin. Multi-colored tattoos require a combination of lasers or other tattoo removal methods, such as chemical peels and dermabrasion.

Older, homemade tattoo inks respond better to laser treatment. Professional, permanent inks in yellow, red, and blue require a combination of lasers of different wavelengths and multiple treatments.

It is very difficult for tattoos to disappear 100% or return to normal skin color. The ability to respond quickly or slowly to treatment depends a lot on the composition of the tattoo ink, the depth of the ink in the skin, and the patient's constitution.

Doctors recommend that when you need to remove a tattoo, you should go to a medical facility with a dermatology specialist to be examined directly and advised on a specific treatment regimen, and given instructions on care during and after treatment to reduce complications and achieve the best results.