Education and Training – the Keys to Success
June 12, 2022
Are your client intake forms asking the right questions? With the number of baby-boomers we all have in our permanent makeup practices, today, we should be asking specific questions regarding their current health and health history.
One example would be knee replacements. More and more younger women, especially athletic women, are having knee replacements. Are you asking if your client has a joint replacement on your client intake forms? If so, do they require pre-medication? Only their orthopedic surgeon can answer this. This is due to the opinion of each surgeon. What makes it difficult is this opinion is not across the board and can never be assumed one way or the other, by us.
Some surgeons want all their patients pre-medicated and that could be from one, 1000 milligram of an antibiotic 1-hr. prior to procedure, to a 5, 7- or 10-day course of antibiotics. Others do not want their patients pre-medicated after 2-years. It is just not a call we can make. We would be guessing and placing our client at risk.
Any infection in the body can stop at an artificial joint, since it has no antibodies and will allow infection to just collect at that location. It happened to my own father. He had a knee replacement in his 50’s, that was perfect and years later, began to flare up, become red, swollen and painful. His doctor was giving him steroid shots in his knee to reduce the inflammation. It would calm down and months later flare up, again. In a phone conversation, he mentioned he had a tooth that was acting up and being in his late 70’s, I thought it would be hard to have him understand the connection. I explained what could be happening and urged him to see his dentist, right away. It was a molar; it was pulled out and he lived till 98 and never had another issue with his knee. It was, in fact, his tooth.
Are you asking your permanent makeup clients to list any auto-immune diseases they have? Often, post-menopausal women and even peri-menopausal women have hypo-thyroid issues, such as Hashimoto’s, and are on a hormone replacement. It really isn’t for us to determine whether they require medical clearance, so have them ask their doctors. Many women can develop thyroid issues as young as 40.
Lupus is an autoimmune disease that requires medical clearance and they cannot be in a flare up at the time of a permanent makeup procedure. Bleeding, bruising and risk of improper healing as well as infection are all possible.
The American Academy of Micropigmentation offers up-to-date, client intake forms as well as informed consent and re-consent forms to its members. Keep a look out for my next blog in which I will discuss other possible contraindications. Please feel free to email me with any questions at info@beauinstitute.net or to share any of your experiences with contraindications and micropigmentation.
– Rose Marie Beauchemin-Verzella, CMI, CPCP
