29 May Long Term Adverse Reactions To Tattoos Surprisingly Common

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Marie C. Leger, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology
NYU Langone Medical Center

Medical Research: What inspired this study? How did it come about?

Dr. Leger: As a dermatologist at NYU, I have taken care of several patients with tattoo reactions–some of them mild (like longstanding itching for example) and some of them more severe (like long term reactions to a particular color that can severely disfigure the tattoo) and wondered how common it was for people to have adverse tattoo reactions or complications. There were lots of case reports in the literature but only a few larger studies examining how common these kinds of complaints were–and these were all European studies. We decided to do a quick survey to give us a better idea of how common it is for people to have problems with their tattoos.

Medical Research: What do you think is the most important takeaway from this study for the consumer?

Dr. Leger: Tattoos have risks associated with them–which is part of their appeal I’m sure–but I do think it’s important for people to know that long term tattoo reactions (including for example, itching, scaling, swelling) may be more common than we realize.  A recent Danish study shows that these kinds of reactions can be quite distressing for people and significantly impact their quality of life.

Medical Research: The press release says you may do further studies on other factors that may put people at risk for chronic tattoo complications – any ideas on what other factors you may look into studying?

Dr. Leger: One thing that emerged in our study is that people don’t go to the doctor that often with tattoo complaints–less than a third of the people we talked to did–and we can often help. Other studies suggest that people often go back to tattoo parlors with complaints or complications, so we are currently working on a study about the kinds of complications/complaints that tattoo artists see and how comfortable they are with them. I think tattoo artists are kind of “first responders” when people have problems and we are interested in what kinds of things they see and how to help them get people to the right place for help.

I should emphasize that while of course infections are a risk of tattoos and this can be dependent on tattoo parlor practices, a lot of the complications that we are picking up on in our survey (and that I have seen in some of my patients) do not have to do with the tattoo artists’ or parlors’ practices but rather qualities of the ink and how the body’s immune system responds to it.

Citation:

Self-reported adverse tattoo reactions: a New York City Central Park study

Bobbi G. Brady, Heidi Gold, Elizabeth A. Leger and Marie C. Leger

Article first published online: 27 MAY 2015 | DOI: 10.1111/cod.12425

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Marie C. Leger, MD, PhD (2015). Long Term Adverse Reactions To Tattoos Surprisingly Common 

Last Updated on May 29, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD