Laser tattoo removal expert Dr. Will Kirby was recently named to the Editorial Advisory board of Healthy Aging, a prominent dermatological medical journal. From the announcement:

No, Healthy Aging is not starting a TV program, but if we did, we'd want Dr. Kirby on it. Will Kirby, DO, FAOCD, is the owner of Kirby Dermatology and Dr. Tattoff, both in Beverly Hills. You may know him also as a featured physician on Dr. 90210, The Doctors, Extra and reality shows Big Brother and Love Shack. He can now add Healthy Aging Editorial Advisor to that list of accomplishments.

Dr. Kirby is a board certified dermatologist, clinical preceptor at Western University of Health Sciences, consultant to pharmaceutical and medical device companies and founder of his own line of skin care products, Kirby Dermaceuticals. He's an expert at laser tattoo removal and has published numerous articles on the subject.

As a member of our advisory board, Dr. Kirby will assist us in planning issues, advise us on medical aesthetic trends and occasionally contribute articles.

As an introduction, we sent him a few get-to-know-you questions:

What interests you most about dermatology?

Perhaps what interests me most about dermatology is that it is one of the few medical specialties that is both cerebral and technical. Every day I get to use both my brain and my hands! Because of this unique blend I am continually learning and am always engaged.

With a Beverly Hills practice, you must see a lot of glamorous people. What advice do you have for average people who want to preserve their skin and look their best?

Every day patients come to my office seeking advice on complexion enrichment, and I tell them that looking your best begins with compliance and education. Half of a patient's skin care regimen is what they obtain from me and half is what they do in their own home every day and night.

There have been a lot of technological advances in dermatology recently. What new technologies are you most excited about?

There have been so very many wonderful advancements in the dermatology field in the last few years. I may be biased, but I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg regarding laser technology, and that field offers a tremendous amount of excitement for many of my fellow dermatologists.

Are there any common misconceptions the public has over what a dermatologist does or can do?

It is truly remarkable that much of the pubic still doesn't know what dermatologists do. Just the other day a patient I have been seeing for tattoo removal asked if I could refer him to someone who could take a look at an odd mole! I feel that it is imperative that dermatologists continually educate their patients about the dermatology profession.

Known worldwide as the leading expert on laser tattoo removal, Dr. Will Kirby returned to Nova Southeastern University this past weekend to speak to a packed house of students. At the lecture, Dr. Kirby shared his experiences as a doctor, entrepreneur, and television personality to a room full of open ears. Read more about what Dr. Kirby shared with NSU students here.

Widely recognized as the world's leading authority on tattoo removal, Dr. Tattoff's medical director, Dr. Will Kirby, published yet another tattoo removal article in the January/February 2010 issue of the medical journal Skin & Aging. From the article:

TATTOO REMOVAL: WIPING THE SLATE CLEAN
WILLIAM KIRBY, DO, FAOCD, ALPESH DESAI, DO, FAOCD, TEJAS DESAI, DO, FAOCD

Tattoos are becoming increasingly more prevalent in our society. In 2003, a Harris Poll estimated that 16% of the U.S. population had at least one tattoo. A 2006 study survey showed that 24% of people aged 18 to 50 had tattoos. This increase in tattoo placement will likely be followed by an increased interest in tattoo removal. The ability to remove tattoo ink safely and efficiently has improved greatly in the last decade with improved laser technology. This article will discuss current modalities used for tattoo removal as well as older methods that are becoming obsolete.

The article, Tattoo Removal: Wiping the Slate Clean, continues on to discuss the pros and cons of various methods of tattoo removal.

Dr. TATTOFF was featured in a laser tattoo removal article in Inc. magazine this past Wednesday. From the article:

Regret that Tattoo? No Problem
More entrepreneurs are making money on removing unwanted body art.

When Dr. Will Kirby and his partner decided in 2004 to open a business that would specialize in removing tattoos, they were eyeing a growing market. “Fifty years ago sailors had 90 percent of tattoos. Now, lawyers and doctors and everyone else had tattoos,” says Ian Kirby, Will’s brother and current business partner. The year before, a Harris Interactive Poll had estimated that about 17 percent of Americans had a tattoo.

Dr. Kirby noticed studios etching tattoos everywhere he looked, but he couldn’t find a clinic that specialized in serving the inevitable proportion of these studios’ customers who would regret their permanent body art. He opened the first Dr. Tattoff in Beverly Hills to fill this need. On Dr. Tattoff’s first day of business, 90 people inquired about the process of removing a tattoo. Six years, 50,000 treatments, and two more locations later, the environment for the unusual franchise concept has only improved. In an economy when start-up capital is hard to come by, Dr. Tattoff has plans to open an additional location in Texas later this year, and, if all goes well, to expand to nearly every state within five years.

“I think the demand is rising every day,” says Dr. Kirby. “There are 20-25,000 tattoo parlors putting on tattoos every day and very few people removing them efficiently. If you come to my clinic, we’re busy every day of the week.”

In a 2006 Northwestern University study, 24 percent of respondents reported having a tattoo and 17 percent of them were considering getting it removed. More entrepreneurs are looking to cater to that 17 percent, whether it be through tattoo removal, training tattoo removal technicians, or, in one case, developing an easier-to-remove ink.

The success of tattoo removal businesses like Dr. Tattoff was benefited by several trends. The most obvious was the increasing social acceptability of tattoos. An art that was once reserved for bikers and gang members has now, according to the Northwestern study, left a mark on nearly a quarter of the population. And as the number of tattoos increases, so does the number of people who regret them. Another trend is the improving technology for tattoo removal. “Before, lasers were kind of like bazookas; they would just blast the skin,” says Ian Kirby. “And doctors really hadn’t had enough experience with them to do much with them.”

Now experienced practitioners are often able to remove tattoos with little or no scarring or discoloration. And, thanks to a new die, laser removal may get even easier. Infinitink, which was released by a company called Freedom2 last year, can be removed in fewer laser treatments than a typical ink tattoo. Although Freedom2 has thus far sold less than a mere $100,000 of the ink—tattoo artists like to consider their art permanent—it was met with high consumer approval in marketing tests. Despite lowering the number of paid treatments each tattoo would require for removal, Infinitink is a welcome development among tattoo removal businesses.

“If you could get a tattoo and have it for spring or summer, show it off, and get it removed in one or two treatments come October, than I think many many more people who would never get a tattoo would get a tattoo, and many people who already have tattoos would get plenty more because they could just get rid of it if they didn’t want it,” Ian Kirby says.

Palomar Medical Technologies, one company that sells lasers to tattoo-removal clinics, saw a 575 percent growth in sales between when they first started selling the device in 2000 and 2007. During the economic turmoil of 2008, purchases of the $75,000 device dropped by about a third, but Branden Morris, Palomar’s integrated marketing manager, commented that sales began to resurge last year.

Tattoo removal training programs have also taken off. Louis Silberman, the co-founder of the National Laser Institute (NLI) in Scottsdale, Arizona, is opening a new location in Dallas within the next two months and planning at least five more. Since 2004, the institute has trained more than 3,000 people in laser tattoo removal. Silberman also started a consulting business specifically for tattoo removal start-ups last year. He says he’s currently in discussions with about 50 people who are interested in opening up tattoo-removal clinics, most who have been trained to remove tattoos in one of the NLI’s 3- to 14-day laser courses.

In order to open a tattoo removal clinic, indirect supervision of a doctor is required. This means that a doctor has to be available for advice, but not necessarily in the building. Some states also require the technician to be a medical professional, such as a nurse, in order to perform the procedure. Despite these barriers to entry, Silberman sees the tattoo removal business as bound to succeed.

“I would say the number one reason people want to take tattoos off is because they love them so much that they want to put on a new tattoo, but all their cool body parts are taken up by old tattoos,” Silberman says. “It made us realize, gosh, there’s a market for this.”