If you’ve been researching laser tattoo removal you may have come across something called the R20 method which supposedly removes ink quicker and more effectively than the traditional way. Instead of 10+ treatment sessions there are reports of tattoos being removed in a third of that time with no increased risk of adverse side effects.
All sounding good so far and you might think ‘yep that’s what I want’ …
However, depending on just how much research you’ve done you may not be aware of all that this method entails and, in fact, you might want to reconsider after you hear more.
The very first thing to stress is that effective pain relief is vital. Both before lasering commences and between each subsequent pass of the laser. This is because R20 effectively means ‘repeat every 20 minutes’…and this is completed for at least 4 concurrent (i.e the same treatment session and not 6 weeks apart) passes of the laser, separated by only a 20 minute break to wait for the white water vapour blisters to disappear. Not only that, the laser power is increased significantly with each pass. Not for the faint hearted nor anyone with a low pain threshold. In addition, only a few studies have been done and on different lasers. In fact, the original study was completed using what’s called an Alexandrite laser which is potentially ‘weaker’ in that it doesn’t penetrate as deeply into skin tissue as the Q-switched Nd:YAG. We feel it’s too early to assess how well the R20 treatment method performs overall and across ALL lasers and would not feel comfortable offering this service to our clients at this stage pending more information becoming mainstream knowledge. However, there MAY be a place to try the method on resistant, deep but very faded ink particles towards the end of a course of traditional treatments.
Less well known is the R0 method which, as you might already guess, is effectively the same as the R20 only with no time at all in between laser passes. This is because we can now remove the water vapour blisters immediately if need be. Again, this is not something we intend offering at this studio at this moment in time.