When Yogi Lost his Second Heart: A story of Tattoo Granuloma

Background of the Case

Tattooing is a very old procedure that includes injecting the desired colour of ink pigment into the dermis. Most societies around the world have it, and it is getting more and more prevalent in developing nations. In addition, it is spreading more quickly among Indian rural youth because to their growing interest for new fashion trends.

The Tahitian word “tattau,” which meaning “to mark something,” is the source of the English word tattoo.  Tattoos can be broadly categorised as either permanent (which lasts a lifetime) or temporary (which lasts for a few weeks). There are three different types of permanent tattooing: traumatic, cosmetic (decorative tattoos and permanent makeup), and medical/therapeutic.[1]

Presentation of the Case

This is a story of, 21 year old Yogi, college going student, lives in a village with family, after too much scrolling down on social media for tattoo hashtags, he decided to make a tattoo. So he went to a local tattoo artist and made tattoo of red colored heart along with his name in green colored tattoo ink on left forearm(Fig. 1)and posted some images on social account. He was happy as he got so many likes.

But his happiness was short lived as his tattoo get distorted.He experienced an itching and pain over red colored heart tattoo, it gradually increased in intensity and developed raised lesion and disfigurement of tattoo.(Fig 2)