Tattoos are forever. But what happens if you outgrow yours?

Scrubbing it off with soap is not an option and neither is burning it off with acid.

The method that doctors recommend to get rid of a tattoo is a procedure called pigment laser tattoo removal.

Such procedures are available at places like National Skin Centre, National University Hospital, LL Cheong Skin and Laser Clinic and Eileen Tan Skin, Laser and Hair Transplant Clinic at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre.

Short pulses of high energy laser beams are directed at the skin to target the tattoo pigments.

The pigments, which appear as granules under a microscope, are broken into tinier fragments by the laser beams. The smaller fragments are then taken up by local skin scavenger cells and removed from the dermis.

The treated area will look red and swollen for between three and five days. The skin will also form scabs but these will drop off after a week and the tattoo will appear slightly lighter.

As the procedure can be quite painful, local anaesthesia in the form of injections or cream should be applied before treatment.

Treatment of small areas of skin typically costs between $200 and $300 but more sessions are often needed to remove professional tattoos. It may also be difficult to remove all traces of a tattoo, depending on its size and colour.

Dr Chua Sze Hon, senior consultant dermatologist at the National Skin Centre, said: 'Some tattoo colours are near impossible to clear, like yellow and green, as they are poorly absorbed by the available laser light.'

This story was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times, on May 7, 2008.