BME: Body Modification Ezine

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Tag: Risks

  • A turn for the worse

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Something that often surprises people is just how quickly a trapped infection can move from nonexistent to serious. These cheek piercings were about two months old and by all appearance doing just fine, when the wearer decided to switch the jewelry. In the process, they somehow managed to drag bacteria into the still-healing fistula, probably bacteria that was on their hands. Within the week the piercings were seriously swollen or infected, so they headed to their doctor, who insisted that the piercings be removed and put her on antibiotics. This photo was taken when she got home from the doctor.

    cheek infection

    Mistake number one: Changing the jewelry in a still healing piercing without proper attention to contamination control. Be aware that cheek piercings often take a long time to heal, and perhaps more importantly, piercings of all types will appear healed long before they actually are healed (and even young technically healed piercings may have very thin skin, making them highly susceptible to injury). Ideally a piercing that’s still healing shouldn’t have its jewelry changed, but if it must, the jewelry needs to be sterilized and gloves and other appropriate cross-contamination must be in place. Whenever possible this should be done at a piercing studio — most will autoclave and change jewelry for a small reasonable charge, or even do it for free when you buy the jewelry.

    Mistake number two: When a piercing is infected with significant amounts of swelling and discharge, the presence of jewelry is both good and bad. It’s bad because a foreign substance in a wound can greatly increase the population of bacteria by giving them a “foothold”, but it’s good because it can keep the wound open and is often the only thing keeping the infection from becoming an abscess. The piercing allows the wound to drain, as the antibiotics (or alternative treatments) work to eliminate the infection — saline soaks and other treatments can also work to draw out the discharge, but can only do so if the wound is open. Even if antibiotics eliminate the infection, you can still have serious complications if a large pocket of pus is trapped under the skin. For this reason I feel it’s important to always have someone familiar with the treatment of troubled piercings involved in such complications — doctors are notorious for making problems with piercings worse due to their unfamiliarity with them, even today. Any reputable piercer is always happy to take the time to look at a piercing having difficulty (whether they did the piercing or not) and give you advice on how best to treat it (and that advice in this case likely would have been “go to the doctor, but don’t let them take out the piercing”). Better yet, piercers, unlike doctors, rarely charge for this service in my experience — although you should always tip them!!!

  • BME/Risks: Extreme Tattoo Ink Bleeding

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    It’s not unusual for some people to get a slight “halo” of color around their tattoos, as the ink moves out via capilliary action and permeates and stains subcutateous tissue. Sometimes this is because of a mistake make by the artist (for example, tattooing too deep), but because anatomy is so variable from person to person, even the best artists have it happen at times. Typically this halo extends not much more than 1/4″ and is subtle enough that most people won’t even notice it, but a friend just sent me this example which is one of the most extreme examples of tattoo ink bleeding out into surrounding tissue that I’ve seen to date.

    In the pictures below, the left one (which also shows a rash that developed after the tattoo, which may or may not be related — I suspect not — and was treated successfully with Sibicort, a Chlorhexidine/Hydrocortisone cream) is two weeks after the tattoo was done, and the right one was taken four months afterward, showing what looks almost like a bruise all the way around the arm. Over a year and a half later and the discoloration still looks the same. The woman with the tattoo has very light, thin skin which is generally sensitive and prone to allergic responses. The ink that was used is the same ink the tattooist normally uses and hasn’t caused problems for other clients as far as anyone knows.

    These pictures shows the extremes to which ink is capable of spreading. It should be noted that because of the likely depth and diffuse nature of the discolouration, it is unlikely that this can be treated short of simply tattooing over all affected skin. If any professionals have comments or feedback on this — theories on what caused it or how to minimize it, or whether this is just an unavoidable risk in a certain percentage of clients — I’d love to hear it.

    megableed

  • The Eyeball Tattoo FAQ has been updated

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I’ve updated the eyeball tattoo FAQ today with lots and lots of new information, including some discussion of risks information that backs up doctor’s warnings that eyeball tattoos could lead to blindness. After meeting someone whose ink migrated into the inside of the eye, into the vitreous humor, and then after a year of floating around in their vision attached itself to the optic nerve, I collected more information on both this issue (which is probably rare) and on intraocular press and ocular hypertension (which is probably common). Short version of the story is that eye tattoos increase the pressure in the eye, which is connected to glaucoma and blindness, and this risk seems to get worse in time, so it’s possible that we may see the “perfect nightmare” of eye tattooing thanks to people not waiting and everyone wanting to jump on the boat and get it done too before the longterm risks were established… imagine if in fifteen to twenty years the incidence of blindness in those with eyeball tattoos is way higher than it should be. Not one bit of fun there.

    Anyway, the FAQ is updated and has a fun animation of Pauly Unstoppable added to it for the version 1.1 title. As always, all new information has been highlighted in a red font so you can quickly find it and only read the new stuff if you’re already familiar. Here’s the link: Eyeball Tattoo FAQ – https://www.bme.com/2012/10/18/the-eyeball-tattoo-faq/

    Brief excerpts from the updates:

    There has been at least one case where over-injected ink has migrated through the sclera and into the vitreous humor. In the case where this happened the eye didn’t seem to want to easily accept the ink, and what did go in seemed not to spread as normal. The other eye was tattooed in the same session without any complications, but three days after the procedure the person had what they described as the worst headache of their life including blurry vision and extreme light sensitivity. Intraocular pressure was increased, and for the next year the person saw black specks in their vision as these ink particle floaters tumbled through their vision. These particles appear to have now migrated to the optic nerve, which is their current location. The optometrist that examined the eye believes that glaucoma are likely and expects some degree of vision impairment or even blindness. It is also possible in this case for alternate complications to have arisen, and perhaps most importantly it is essential to understand that while experience and skill can mitigate this risk, it can not be eliminated and it can happen even to the most experienced artists (but is much, much more likely to happen to those who don’t have years of experience working on hundreds of eyes). Finally, I again want to emphasize that if anything abnormal is observed during the procedure it should be immediately aborted.

    …complications from the tattoo may lead to blindness in the future due to damage to the tissues of the eye and/or optic nerve. Beyond acute injury leading to blindness, the most likely types of blindness related to eye tattooing are believed to develop slowly, perhaps over several decades. It is also likely that eye tattoos amplify preexisting conditions, for example a familial predisposition toward eye diseases such as glaucoma, and that it will be difficult to determine the degree to which the eye tattoo is responsible for the vision loss.

    At some point soon the FAQ will need a rewrite because it’s getting a little jumbled and there may be some repetition as well…

    I also wanted to show three tattoos that have been done recently, all by different artists, that I like visually quite a lot. From top to bottom they are Purple Haze eyes done by Russ Foxx (done with an utter minimum of ink, which all other things being equal increases the safety level), , next a pair of cyan eyes with a magenta iris outline (this type of design should be treated with the utmost of care due to its proximity to the corneal limbus and iris/lens muscles, as discussed in the FAQ) by Max Yampolskiy, and on the bottom, a set of psychedelic rainbow eyes by Chance Davis.

    By the way, I assume this goes without saying but I need to make clear that just because I post a picture doesn’t mean that I endorse or recommend the procedure or the people involved… The risks on this procedure are still being discovered, and they may be quite significant. As much as I love the way these looks, it makes me beyond uncomfortable seeing how many people are getting it done, and how many new practitioners are not just diving into the procedure, but diving right into the deep end. Please treat this procedure with the utmost of care. It has more potential to severely damage someone’s live than just about anything else out there.

  • Second Generation Ear Pointing

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    At the start of October I posted about an ear pointing that Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) had done and included some fresh photos. I’m thrilled today to be able the healed result today, and it’s truly incredible. It’s not just an ear that’s been folded into a point at the top. It’s an ear that’s been completely rebuilt to give the illusion of having grown naturally into this form.

    You may recall the ear pointing trainwreck posted about a month ago. It’s important to understand that the more complicated the procedure gets, the higher the risk of failure, both in terms of full-on failure, and aesthetic mistakes. This is very much the case with advanced ear pointing like this. I’ve been sitting on these pictures for a while, because I don’t have explicit permission to post them, so I’m cropping them more than I want to in order to hide the person’s identity (and really pointing fingers is not my goal), but they show an attempt to do this procedure leaving a customer with an ear that to me looks like the sort of thing a caveman might have after battling a sabretooth tiger. It’s definitely not as gnarly as some procedures-gone-wrong, but it falls far short of what a person should expect — for starters, in addition to the technical aspects of the procedure looking amateur, the aesthetics and angles are nonsensical, and the two ears don’t come close to matching.

    I really want to urge clients to only go to people for work that they can show you multiple healed examples of in their portfolio. And practitioners, there is absolutely no excuse in today’s world for blindly copying procedures you’ve seen more experienced artists post online. Training is available. Take advantage of it. Take it slow. It’s better to be responsible practitioner than to be something akin to a jackass in a comment forum yelling “first”. You don’t want the weight of needlessly messing people up on your conscience. Just remember you’re playing with people’s lives. Do it for them, not for your ego.

  • Cartilage Surface Piercing

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    A friend forwarded me these pictures expressing concern after seeing them in someone else’s portfolio. I’m not going to out the person who did them (in part because it would involve shaming my family’s hometown), because I do agree this is not advisable. Anyone with a cartilage piercing knows how finicky even simple cartilage piercings can be to heal — how slow the process is, and how resistant the tissue can be to allowing a proper fistula to form. Surface piercing on the cartilage increases this risk exponentially, and is asking your body to do something it’s just not evolved to do. Simple rejection is the most likely, although it carries a strong risk of infection and permanent damage to the cartilage and ear structure. I’d urge a quick perusal of the BME wiki entries on Ear Collapse and Cartilage Swelling.

    That said, I have seen cartilage surface piercings heal before, so I can’t tell you that it’s impossible. Just risky. For that reason, I would urge that if someone actually does want to insist on having such a piercing done, that they need to be extremely aware of what’s going on with the piercing — personally my feeling is that this is the sort of piercing that should only be done by those with a ton of experience, or better yet, someone who works in the industry so their coworkers can help them clean and keep a close eye on it. Of course I hope the wearers got lucky and these piercings actually healed, but more realistically, I just hope they made it through this experience with a minimum of damage.

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