If your a pregnant woman with a lower back tat and you need an epidural for the pain, there is some chance of nerve damage or infection. Or so a recent story says. A couple of doctors who noticed the raise in lower back tattoos has concerns that sticking a needle through the ink of the lower back tattoo might be a bad thing. An epidural puts its pain relief drugs right into the spinal area and these nerves are not a good place for the odd bit of tattoo or dead skin to end up.
The study, which including a whooping three patients, didn’t gather enough evidence to be useful one way or the other.
It was useful in spreading a panic among the countless women who now get tattoos the way earlier generations had their nails filed. With more and more tattoo ink ending up in more and more private spots that might be cut into during an operation, this is an area that could use a little more study. People who get and give tattoos are all convinced that it is totally safe and anyone who worries is just being a cry baby.
A study done by the American Academy of Dermatology found that 25 percent of women age 18 to 50 have tattoos and that 20 percent have the tattoos on their lower back that may interfere with an epidural.
Anesthesiologist Mark Kostash is quoted in an Wall Street Journal article as say-“If it was me, and I had a tattoo, I’d say ‘Go around it.'”
