Today, people are fortunate to have several different methods of tattoo removal to choose from.  And, within the past ten years, newer tattoo removal technology has also made tattoo removal easier and less painful than the days of old school tattoo removal.

Ironically, the most popular tattoo removal methods ten years ago are rarely performed today.  Dermabrasion, cryosurgery, and excision were the well known ways to remove tattoos, but now they are thought of as “old school” tattoo removal.
 
Dermabrasion actually sands the skin to remove the surface as well as the middle layers.  As you can imagine, sanding off layers of skin can be very painful, especially if tattoos are large. With dermabrasion tattoo removal usually the majority of a tattoo can be removed, but there are some tattoos that dermabrasion has not been successful at removing.

Cryosurgery is another old school tattoo removal method that doctors used in the past. This technique requires freezing the tattoo skin before attempting dermabrasion.  Freezing the skin makes the procedure fairly painless during removal, but as soon as the skin thaws pain sets in, and the pain can be extremely uncomfortable.

Excision is the literally the old school removal of tattoos where a doctor cuts out and removes the tattoo with a scalpel. After the tattoo is removed the remaining skin is stitched together with sutures leaving behind a scar.  Large tattoos often require skin grafts in order to close area where the tattoo once existed and now remains a wound.

Tattoo removal has most certainly made significant progress making it much easier and less painful to remove tattoos today, in comparison to the old school tattoo removal methods used just 10 years ago.

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