One of the businesses booming (along with the medical profession and pharmaceuticals thanks to the "hepatitis C-tattoo" alliance) as a consequence of the tattoo-craze is the dermatology industry. According to the American Society of Dermatological surgery, over 50% of everyone receiving a tattoo wants it removed.
Tattoo removal via laser surgery is among the fastest growing areas of the dermatology industry.
Depending on the size of the tattoo and colors used, the laser tattoo removal surgery can be very painful and very expensive. Tattoos performed by commercial tattoo parlors are much more difficult to remove because the tattoo is deeper, the ink more complex and thicker. It normally takes between 10 and 15 laser surgery sessions to remove the average tattoo, but 25-30 sessions are not uncommon, depending on the complexity of the tattoo. When you consider the average single session costs between 0 – 0, the removal surgery can be very expensive, costing as much as ,000. That tattoo might cost 00 to remove. And may I remind you, health insurance does not cover tattoo removals – this is strictly out of the pocket expenses. And yet despite this enormous personal cost, most people are so disgusted with their tattoo they’ll literally pay any cost to have it removed.
Plastic Surgeon Tolbert S. Wilkinson, of San Antonio, Texas, who has removed tattoos warns:
"If people only realized how difficult it is to remove a tattoo, understood how costly and how painful tattoo removal is, and recognized that society as a whole still views tattoos as a stigma, maybe they would think seriously before getting one.
Laser removal costs a minimum of ,000.00 (national average) per tattoo, and takes at least 10 to 15 treatments, spread out over two or more years. Even with this treatment, the tattoo is still visible." http://www.heloise.com/tattoo.html
Tattoo author Laura Reybold, writes that ". . .an ever rising number of people are so unhappy with their tattoos that they are willing to pay anything to have them removed."
"Yet an ever rising number of people are so unhappy with their tattoos that they are willing to pay anything to have them removed. Tattoo removal laser surgery is becoming big business for the dermatologists who perform it."
(Laura Reybold, Everything you need to know about the dangers of tattooing and body piercing, p. 30)
Ronald Scutt, says in Art, Sex and Symbol that even among sailors in the Royal Naval, over 50% regretted ever getting a tattoo. And among the married it rose to over 70%
"From the statistics of the Royal Naval survey, the most significant factor to emerge was almost certainly the incidence of regrets. Out of the whole sample, more than half admitted that they wished they had never been tattooed. In the married group, the figure rose to around 70 per cent."
(Ronald Scutt, Art, Sex and Symbol, 1974, p. 179)
One article claims that as many as 80 percent of people with tattoos regret their tattoo. (www.spacecom.af.mil/hqafspc/News/News_Asp/nws_tmp.asp?storyid=02-93)
