---
title: "Paramedical Tattoos: Ink Artists’ Latest Innovation to Aid Body Trauma"
description: "More patients are getting so-called paramedical tattoos to mask their injuries or scars instead of expensive plastic surgery."
date: "2020-02-17"
modified: "2020-02-17"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/paramedical-tattoos-scars-body-art"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
  - "Medical"
tags:
  - "paramedical tattoos"
  - "surgery"
  - "tattoos"
---

# Paramedical Tattoos: Ink Artists’ Latest Innovation to Aid Body Trauma

![More patients are getting so-called paramedical tattoos to mask their injuries or scars instead of expensive plastic surgery.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/you-can-get-medical-tattoos-to-replace-fingernails-or-cover-scars.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Image via Pxhere/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

Instead of expensive or risky cosmetic surgeries, people are taking a new approach to covering up injuries: "paramedical" tattoos.

Tattoo artists have offered [post-mastectomy tattoos](<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-07/breast-tattoos-help-cancer-survivors-feel-whole/10974730>) to breast cancer survivors for years. Now, artists have started expanding outward to other medical procedures, *[The New York Times ](<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/style/paramedical-tattoos.html>)*[reports](<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/style/paramedical-tattoos.html>). A man who lost two fingertips in a workplace got fingernails tattooed on. A woman with severe dog bites on her face had them camouflaged with flesh-colored ink rather than corrected with surgery.

"I went to plastic surgeons that were supposed to be the best in Memphis,” the woman, a dog breeder named Leslie Pollan, told the *NYT*. "They gave me no hope, so I started looking for other options."

Instead, she found a tattoo artist who could mask her scars, a process she found crucial to [emotional healing](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/penis-transplant-surgery>) and restoring her self-confidence after her injury.

"You don't understand until you’ve been through it," Ms. Pollan said. "It really made me have a different outlook on life."

Her tattoo artist, Eric Catalano, offers this sort of restorative, paramedical tattoo for free, financing them through his more conventional work and a crowdfunding campaign that brought him $12,000, the *NYT* reports.

"Financially it doesn't make sense, but it's just something that I love to do," Catalano told the *NYT*. "Every time I see that emotion, I'm 100 percent sure this is something that I can't stop doing."

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)