Beauty habits cause trouble

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 problems

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

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

A doctor is explaining the anatomy of the ear 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 in the piercing area. 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 tattooing habit that many people are choosing, according to doctors, getting a tattoo is easy but when you want to remove it, you encounter 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 abroad 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 they gave birth to a white, healthy son, trying to keep him without a single scar on his body, but now he had blue and red ink on his body. In B.'s hometown, most people with tattoos are often stereotyped as bad people.

When picking up his children from school, going to the market, going out, etc., he often received unfriendly looks. Sadness turned to regret when his first daughter did not want to go to kindergarten because her friends boycotted her, saying that he and his father were bad people. He also could not get a job in a 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 easy. 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 dermatitis. At the same time, facing financial difficulties, Mr. B. temporarily gave up and accepted wearing 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 and after 6 hours of painful inking, 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 in young people who have multiple piercings on their earlobes and ear rims. Piercing is a fairly common 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 like 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 flow. Piercings in these locations will take longer to heal. Infections in the cartilage can cause more serious problems than 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 in saline to clean the piercing area twice a day.

Keep the earring in place until the wound is completely healed, which can take up to 6 weeks. Avoid swimming in pools, ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, etc., or even taking a bath when you have just had your piercing pierced. Do not apply any medication to the piercing without consulting your doctor.

If you have symptoms of piercing ulcer, 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 to limit complications.

Regarding the arduous journey to remove tattoos, according to Dr. Quach Thi Bich Van, a specialist in dermatology and cosmetic skin care 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% compared to the same period last year, and two-thirds of the customers are men.

A study published in the US National Library of Medicine, involving 1,100 American adults with tattoos, found that 18.2% regretted one or more of their tattoos, and those who regretted had their tattoos 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 go to remove tattoos is that they are all between the ages of 15-35. The most commonly removed tattoos are large, ugly, old, broken, faded tattoos; couple tattoos, names or portraits of ex-lovers; scary, strange tattoos, tattoos with negative meanings; tattoos in hard-to-cover places such as the face, neck, nape, hands, feet or tattooed eyebrows, eyelids...

“The most common reason for tattoo removal is regret and anxiety when the tattoo affects work, study, relationships or is no longer suitable for the present,” said Dr. Van.

However, tattoo removal is much more complicated than tattooing. Accordingly, it only takes a few dozen minutes for a small, simple tattoo or a few days for a large, multi-colored, multi-effect tattoo. If the pain is reduced well, 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 method: 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 scars 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 affect tattoos also has certain side effects in the treated skin area. Therefore, in one irradiation, it is not possible to affect 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 inks are permanent, in yellow, red, and blue, requiring multiple 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 department 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.