Medical Tattooing in Hospital Settings versus Parlors and the Challenging Hygiene Requirements

The European Union for Standardization called CEN (Comité Européen de Nomalization), as a result of the project named CEN/TC-435 in January 2020, released a new hygiene standard for tattooing as a non-binding recommendation on safe tattoo practice in Europe, ready for national implementation. It describes hygienic standards for facilities, instruments, tattoo ink handling, and tattoo procedures. Informed consent is included. It is generic and covers all sorts of tattooing. Medical tattooing is performed in hospitals, private clinics, and in tattoo parlors. Hospitals have their own settings and hygiene standards. The article describes practical challenges of medical tattooing performed in hospital settings, with medical tattooing performed in parlors as the reference, with respect to adherence to hygiene standards of different background and nature. It is a challenge possible to overcome in practice. The specialized field of medical tattooing is also visited, and indications and precautions described.