Our story begins in the Italian Alps...

Over five thousand years ago, a Neolithic man, shot through the shoulder by an arrow, apparently escaped his attackers only to die alone on a frozen mountaintop in the Italian Alps.  This man, affectionately named Ötzi, bears on his naturally mummified skin the earliest known symbolic tattoos.  No anchors or mermaids, these tattoos, but bizarre and arcane markings.

The practice caught fire and sprang up on all corners of the globe.  Whether tribal or spiritual ritual, or mere decoration, tattooing has left an indelible mark on human history.  A tattoo became a snapshot of a moment in the life of its host, writ permanent, and taken to the grave.

For most of the tattoo’s history, one can speculate that the same human ingenuity has been working on the problem of removal.  All kinds of frightening and almost unmentionable methods have been attempted to remove tattoos.  To succeed, it seemed, one had to remove the very skin into which the tattoo was embedded.  Most methods were variations on that simple and painful theme.

Then came the laser.

In the 1990s the first lasers developed for laser tattoo removal became commercially available.  Their aim was to fragment tattoo pigment crystals, leaving skin as undisturbed as possible.  Those Q-switched lasers reigned as the first–and only–laser solution to tattoo removal.  Still, the pulse was long, pumping a lot of heat into the pigment and surrounding tissues.  In the wrong hands, burns and scars are easily inflicted.

Enter the PicoSure.

In 2012 technology took its first giant leap forward in decades.  The PicoSure laser, with a pulse 100 times shorter than its Q-switched ancestors, could target tattoo pigment more specifically while drastically reducing the amount of heat released into surrounding tissues.  The PicoSure is especially strong in the black/blue/green and can remove these colors in significantly fewer treatments.

In 2016 tattoos can be removed completely, without scarring or “ghosting.”  Skin is left clear and with normal texture to be displayed proudly–or re-tattooed!  When laser tattoo removal is performed by a physician, comfort becomes a major priority (thanks Hippocratic Oath!), so there is no need to experience the pain so commonly associated with the procedure.

After over 5 millennia of tattooing, we are fortunate to live in the age of complete tattoo removal, where no tattoo is truly an irreversible mistake.