Dermal Punches and Veins?

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Thursday July 10th, 2008 @ 2:50 AM

Filed under: Ear

I know with dermal punching cartilage, you have to look out for veins. But when it comes to dermal punching conches at slightly larger sizes like 2g or 0g, I don’t see how you can really avoid going through SOME veins. Is it really that bad to punch through veins? I read a few horror stories on here that talk about how peoples cartilage wouldn’t stop bleeding because larger veins were punched through. On both of my ears there is a medium sized vein, and a few smaller ones, and I don’t think there is anyway to avoid them. Would punching/ immediately stretching up minimize bleeding if it were to go through some veins?

Punching and immediately stretching would only solve the problem at that specific moment in time. Later when you went home to sleep or just sit around, it would/will begin to bleed again and if capillary veins were severed you could end up losing a fair bit of blood.

This of course is a serious health concern, having personally had a procedure done before where I lost a fair bit of blood over night.

Some artists have dabbled with the idea of using a cautery pen to cauterize the spots where the capillary veins are to completely seal them off. But that can still lead to blood loss should that cauterized area crack and begin to bleed again. Not only that but your bordering on practicing medicine without a license when you do the cauterizing of blood vessels,etc.

This is why, personally, these types of “extreme” modifications should not be taken lightly and just done on anyone and everyone. They should be within arms/phones reach at least for a week to assist in any situations the client may have.

From my personally/professional standpoint I tend to analyze the ear cartilage first to determine where the capillary veins are, along with the shape of the cartilage. Sometimes a 2ga-0ga,etc simply is just too big and will distort/compromise the shape of the ear. When it comes to cartilage punches I’ll punch and stretch a half size just out of routine. Before I do the procedure though I will path out exactly WHERE all the capillary veins are and do my best to miss the majority of them.

So instead of clients having wild eyed dreams of “OMG I WANT 0GA HELIX PUNCH!” instead they should just walk into a studio and go: “Alright what is the LARGEST size you can punch without hitting any capillary veins.” Though if you want the larger size no matter what, then you just have to suck it up and pay your rock’n'roll dues and accept the risk of perhaps losing quite a lot of blood.

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