To any doctors, re tattooing and healing times?

This is a question mainly to anyone who is in the medical profession, who has experiance in dermatology.

I am a tattoo artist and was told the other day by a nurse that you should leave at least 8 months between getting large tattoos that are close together, or you risk septicaemia. And she said, "You should know that"

Now we've done back pieces that take 2 hours every 2 weeks, or big things and we usually leave 3 months because this is the time I鈥檝e been told it takes for a tattoo to 100% totally settle.

Everyone I鈥檝e asked who tattoos had no idea that you should leave tattooing large work 8 months before doing another thing close to it. Most will leave it a reasonable time in-between and none have ever had any problems doing this, that can't be put down to bad aftercare on the client鈥檚 part (getting dirt, abrasive substances in it etc).

What is right? And what is the medical reasoning behind it.

anytime you have an open wound you are susceptible to infection. it does not matter how many times you clean the area of skin with alcohol or any other anti-microbial because they do not kill all bacteria or viruses or fungi. this is true of most agents safe enough to be used on skin.

8 months is a long time (too long) because an acute infection can occur within hours but it should not take 8 months for any bacterial infection to present itself. if you had septicemia you would know well before 8 months after getting a tattoo.

as far as septicemia, this is caused by bacterial or fungal presence in the blood. septicemia is a life threatening condition. for septicemia to happen bacteria or fungi have get into blood vessels (tattooing can cause this.) however, the person getting the tattoo will be so sick within days that it seems wrong that you should have to wait 8 months to get another tattoo.

that being said, there might be recommended time frames between tattoos. it is difficult to say what these are based on. is it a tattoo practice that prevents the ink from smudging? is it a healing issue( scabs should be gone before more tattoo work is done).

look into tattoo regulations at the department of health of you state.

Not me

i'm no dr, but 8 months is an incredible long time. septicaemia is caused by localized infection, right? so i could understand if you got a tattoo, then it got infected and you did nothing about it and went back a week later to get your tat finished, yeah, you could have a problem there. but once something is healed, its healed. thats it. and if there is no sign of infection, and it has been adequately cared for, then your risk of infection and significantly declined (from the first tattoo) and the second tattooing session is just like getting a new one and those original procedures need to be back in place to keep it healthy and clean.

i mean, i'm looking at it this way... little kid riding his bike, falls and scrapes his knee pretty badly. he might wipe it off, but its pretty much nasty and an open wound for a few days. he doesnt have to wait 8 months before he can scrape his knee again, right? he'll probably do it again in a week or 2, if not sooner.