HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Sept. 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Patients with unsightly scars from cancer surgeries may benefit from “medical tattoos” that can help restore some of the skin‘s natural appearance, Dutch researchers report.
The researchers surveyed 56 patients who got medical tattoos on their head and neck, and found they were pleased with the results.
“The mystery until now was how well patients appreciated the technique,” said study co-author Dr. Rick van de Langenberg, an ear, nose and throat surgeon at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. In addition to saying their scars looked better, “patients were less stressed about the appearance of the scar and thought less about it,” he said.
U.S. experts noted that the procedure is common in the United States.
In a general sense, “medical tattooing had been performed in the U.S. for decades,” said Dr. Fred Fedok, president-elect of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
“It can be used anywhere where the application of pigment aids the appearance of a region. When an area or structure is too light, it can be made darker and vice versa. Many times, the normal pigment of the skin can be mimicked,” Fedok said.
Dr. Jessie Cheung, a dermatologist in Willowbrook, Ill., said medical tattooing is probably most often performed on patients after breast cancer surgery. Tattoos can improve appearance where there’s a mismatch of skin color around the areola, she explained.
The new study specifically looked at tattoos that were used to make skin look more natural after procedures related to tumors in the head and neck. The researchers focused on survey responses from 56 patients who underwent medical tattoo procedures at an Amsterdam hospital between 2007 and 2015. The patients had an average age of 57, and 75 percent were women.
In one case, tattooing techniques restored the redness to a woman’s lower lip after she underwent a procedure that robbed her lip of its color. In another case, tattooing helped remove much of the redness from a long scar down a woman’s neck, according to the report.
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