Lately, healthcare professionals have been raising concerns over the use of light therapy on patients with tattoos. With the popularity of tattoo, especially among entertainers and athletes, health care providers frequently find themselves needing to apply light therapy over tattooed skin. However, excessive heating can occur with Class III B and IV Lasers due to their high irradiance (mW/cm2). A Nevada-based firm CareWear, who will be speaking and exhibiting at the WT | Wearable Technologies Conference in San Francisco on July 9-10, has now developed wearable light patches, which can be used to safely apply light therapy on tattooed skins.
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Light therapy is a way to treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and certain other conditions by exposure to artificial light. Light therapy applied with LEDs or Lasers is commonly used to decrease pain and facilitate tissue healing.
A recent case report documented blistering of the skin over a black tattoo. The blisters were most likely caused by the inadvertent heating of the iron oxides and/or the metal salts in the tattoo’s black pigment.
CareWear’s wearable light patches have low average irradiance (<3mW/cm2) and a maximum tissue temperature elevation of 6° C. The lower levels of fluence, irradiance and temperature change provided by CareWear patches will not cause localized heating of red, blue or black tattoos, reports CareWear.
CareWear’s light patches are exceptionally thin and flexible, which allow maximum conformability to the body contours without detaching or breaking. This flexible adhesion minimizes optical reflection while maximizing penetration of the light into the tissues.
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CareWear® Corp Wearable Therapeutics is a privately held firm based in Nevada. The founders have years of experience in product development and design, outcomes research, and clinical education in medical devices. In 2018 CareWear was recognized as a Startup Challenge Winner by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. Known as “the Academy Awards of Photonics,” the SPIE Startup Challenge is a high-stakes, global competition where entrepreneurs in photonics present their products and services to a panel of expert judges in technology, finance, and business.
