Dr. Marc Taylor is a Board Certified plastic surgeon with almost 20 years of experience treating patients with lasers. He was one of the first physicians in the country to use lasers to treat skin conditions such as tattoos, brown spots, broken blood vessels, spider veins, cancers, hair, and wrinkles. 

He was the first physician in San Antonio to purchase a laser for removing tattoos, removing vascular lesions, and removing hair.

Individuals with tattoos frequently wish to have them removed. Today, the use of a laser,  or occasionally surgery, are the accepted methods of removing tattoos. In the past dermabrasion (sanding), rubbing salt on the tattoos, and burning the tattoos were used. These methods "removed" the tattoos, but they leave scarring that can be worse than the original tattoo. 

An example of the  results of free "infrared" treatments is to the left.

The skin in the area of a tattoo can have scarring and loss of pigment from when the tattoo was put on.

There are many types of lasers, and some lasers work better than others in removing the tattoo inks in the skin. The lasers to treat tattoos are constantly upgraded, since a laser has many computer parts. Dr. Taylor has the latest laser available, and although not perfect, the laser works well in removing the tattoo inks, especially the blacks, purples, and reds. Dr. Taylor's newest laser works much better than previous lasers on green, yellow, and blue inks. 

The laser is energized light, and it works when the light passes through the skin and is absorbed by the ink color in the tattoo. The energized light of the laser blasts the ink and some of the surrounding skin cells into small pieces, and some of these cells come off immediately or over the next few days. The rest of the destroyed particles are absorbed and destroyed by the body with time.

The treatments are done in the office with chilling of the skin, and for a small additional fee, performing a small local injection into the area of the tattoo of anesthetic. Treatment often results in open skin areas, similar to a scraped knee, which can take 4-10 days to heal. During the healing time the areas need to be covered to protect them from trauma or the sun and to be kept moist with ointment. The areas should remain out of the sun and be covered with a bandage. After healing a sun block has to be used for several weeks.

The inks fade with each treatment, but most tattoos take at least 3-8 treatments. Some home made tattoos or tattoos with very little ink can be removed with two to four treatments. Those tattoos that have a lot of ink, or blue and green ink, and cover a large area, take more treatments. Some tattoos cannot be removed without showing some degree of scarring, due to the depth of the inks in the skin, but normally the scarring is less noticeable than the tattoo. 

Unfortunately, even though Dr. Taylor has over 20 years of experience in treating tattoos, it is impossible to be exact in how many treatments it will take to remove a tattoo. 

The removal can be a long process, since a laser treatment can only be given once every 6-8 weeks. An initial consultation is required, which involves evaluating your tattoo and providing important information to you. The consultation costs $55.-75.00. If you wish, the initial consultation and first laser treatment can be done on the same day, as long as the office time is planned in advance. Each laser treatment session costs $195.00 for 10 minutes and $15.00 per minute after the first ten minutes when treating large areas. Most tattoos can be treated in ten minutes and take 3-8 laser treatments. The anesthetic injection is an extra $10-25. fee.

Call 210-490-1757 for an appointment.