It pays to be inquisitive. A 73 year-old female presented for routine treatment of actinic keratosis and needed a head to toe annual examination. I noticed a blob of tattoo ink along her left chest just below her axillary region. I asked her what it was from, and she promptly responded…that’s my atomic tattoo. I said…what?
Then came her story. When she was 12 years-old she was part of a tattooing program at her school. She was blood typed and then a tattoo of her blood-type was placed along her left chest wall, as shown in the photograph above. Needless to say time has not been kind to this tattoo and it has blurred to the point of being worthless, at least when it comes to being able to identify her blood type. The tattoo was placed using a device called a vibro-tool.
I presented this case at a national meeting a number of years ago, and I decided to produce a Video presentation so it could be posted on YouTube. In researching this I came across a really excellent article written by Elizabeth Wolf and Anne Laumann in the J Am Acad Dermatol. To read the abstract for this article Click HERE.
To play the VIDEO presentation Click on the link above…