Lower Back Tattoos and Epidurals

Lower Back Tattoos and Epidurals

A few days ago I watched a news segment aired on CTV regarding lower back tattoos placing women in birthing risks. According to the anesthesiologist interviewed, women in labour who have lower back tattoos may not always have the option of receiving epidural analgesia during labour. Some anesthesiologists have concerns that puncturing tattooed skin with needles used for providing epidurals may  push the pigment/dye into the epidural space and cause a reaction.

This news certainly made me think twice about getting a tattoo on my lower back. I tried to find more information about this issue and came across an article that was published in the "Obstetrical and Pediatric Anesthesia" Journal. This article talked about trying to find research literature from two different scientific research literature databases for information on complications of providing epidurals into tattooed lumbar area. There was no information found providing evidence that such a complication has occurred so the article ended up discussing "implications" of providing epidurals into tattooed lumbar area instead. The authors attributed this lack of evidence as partly due to the lack of or a small number of women with lumbar tattoos who had received epidurals. It is an interesting read. I took the liberty of posting on here the link to the article so that you guys can read more about it. I’ve also attached a link to the CTV segment about the issue.

1) Journal Article http://www.cja-jca.org/cgi/content/full/49/10/1057

2) CTV news segment http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1108868228321_35/?hub=CTVNewsAt11

Note: if the link for the article doesn’t work, i also have the pdf version of the article.

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