Answer a few practical questions about the trip. They become a checklist for preparation, hand luggage, main luggage, the journey and the destination.
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Step 1 / 4
Tell us about the trip, not about your medical history
Only these four answers change the checklist. You are not asked for a city, an address, a date or a diagnosis.
Step 2 / 4
What part of your routine has to travel with you?
Selecting something here means only that it appears in your checklist. No recommendation about treatment, dosage or products follows from it.
Step 3 / 4
What tends to make things harder for you?
This deliberately does not ask “what triggers your flares?”. It changes only which planning questions appear below.
Step 4 / 4
What matters for this trip
These notes appear because of what you selected. Rules about flying, prescriptions and healthcare are labelled as such and linked to their source.
Medicines and medical supplies at airport security
Travel rule
When flying from an EU airport, the standard rules generally limit liquids in cabin baggage to containers of no more than 100 ml. Liquid medicines you need during the trip are exempt from that volume limit — but you may be asked to establish that they are genuine medical items.
Some airports now use newer screening equipment and apply different rules. Check the current information from your departure airport and your airline before you travel.
Dressings, bandages and similar supplies are not liquids. Sprays, gels, cleansing solutions and ointments are covered by the liquids rule unless they count as a medicine you need during the trip.
A short document about what you are carrying can make security checks and an unexpected medical contact easier. What goes in it is your decision — this page fills in nothing for you and imports nothing from the symptom tracker.
Your healthcare team can provide such a letter. This page cannot promise that any letter will satisfy a particular airline, airport or border authority.
Questions you answer for yourself
Medicine name and the name of the active substance
Formulation, strength and dosage
Prescribing practice with contact details
Any storage requirements stated in the product information
Storage requirements differ from product to product. This page deliberately states no temperature and no transport method: the product information for your specific medicine is what applies.
Before you travel, ask your pharmacy or healthcare team how to transport your medicine over the journey you have planned, and what to do if the conditions could not be maintained on the way.
Questions you answer for yourself
How long is the door-to-door journey, realistically?
What is available at the destination to meet the requirements?
Who can I ask if something does not go as planned on the way?
Airport security rules do not decide what your destination allows
Travel rule
Airport security rules only govern what you may take through the checkpoint. Whether a prescription medicine may be brought into a particular country is a separate question, governed by that country’s own law.
Medicines covered by narcotics legislation carry additional requirements — depending on the destination, for example a clinician’s certificate authenticated by the responsible state authority. Sort that out with the prescribing practice well before departure.
This page deliberately keeps no country-by-country list: those rules change, differ by product, and could not be kept reliably current here.
If you need to fill a prescription in another EU country
Travel rule
A prescription issued in one EU country is generally valid in other EU countries. The medicine may, however, be sold there under a different name or not be available at all.
So do not rely on the brand name alone. A cross-border prescription should name the active substance, and carry the patient’s details, the issue date, the prescriber’s name, professional qualification, contact details, work address and signature, plus the formulation, quantity, strength and dosage.
If you think you may need to fill a prescription while away, ask the prescribing practice before you travel whether such a prescription would help.
The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) gives insured travellers access to medically necessary state-provided healthcare during a temporary stay in EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, under the same conditions and costs that apply to people insured there.
The EHIC is not travel insurance. It does not cover private healthcare, repatriation or lost property.
For chronic conditions, care that is medically necessary during the stay can be covered — judged against your situation and how long you are staying. Whether a particular treatment falls under that is not for this page to say; planned treatment abroad normally has to be arranged with your health insurer in advance.
Questions you answer for yourself
Is my EHIC valid?
Do I have my health insurer’s contact details with me?
Does my travel insurance cover pre-existing conditions?
Where do I find information about state healthcare at my destination?
Inside Germany the same routes apply as at home — only without your usual practice around the corner. Before you leave, note how to reach your own practice and where you would go at your destination if you needed care.
Outside the EU, EEA, Switzerland and the UK the EHIC does not apply. What your insurance covers there depends on your policy and on any agreements between the countries.
Before you travel, check with your health insurer and travel insurer what is covered at your destination — in particular how pre-existing conditions are treated.
If your healthcare team has given you a wound-care plan, that plan still applies while you are travelling. Dermatology patient guidance recommends following your individual wound-care plan and contacting a dermatologist when wounds fail to heal, reopen or become more painful.
This page deliberately recommends no dressing, cleansing product or antiseptic, and does not tell you how often to change anything. Pack what you already use.
This calculation uses only the numbers you enter. It derives nothing from your condition, estimates no consumption for you, and sets no surplus on your behalf.
If you want a buffer, you choose how many extra days it covers — for example with a delayed return journey or higher-than-usual use in mind.
Work out the quantity yourself
Enter what you normally use to calculate a quantity.
Planning around heat, humidity and sweating
From dermatology patient guidance
Some people with HS find that heat and sweating worsen their symptoms. Dermatology patient guidance recommends reducing overheating and sweating where these aggravate HS.
That is not a prediction: whether a trip to a warm country leads to a flare cannot be derived from it, and nothing planned on this page can prevent a flare. What can be planned is the shape of the day.
Questions you answer for yourself
Is there somewhere cool in the accommodation to recover?
Can demanding activities be moved to cooler parts of the day?
Will I have access to washing or changing facilities?
Do I need more clothing than usual because of sweating or drainage?
Friction can irritate skin affected by HS. On days when you walk substantially more than usual, your established clothing and wound-care routine may therefore matter more than it does at home.
Which clothing and which materials come into question for which body area is covered in detail in the clothing and friction guide — it is not repeated here.
Questions you answer for yourself
Where can breaks be built in?
If I carry a backpack: where do the straps sit, and can that be changed?
Do I need changing supplies with me during the day?
If sitting is sometimes painful for you, it is worth looking at the booking: some seats, fares and connections make it easier to stand up, change position or take a break.
This page deliberately names no interval at which you should stand up. Recommendations of that kind come from a different context and do not transfer to HS.
Questions you answer for yourself
Can the route be chosen with changes or breaks built in?
Is there a seat choice that makes standing up easier?
Clothing for the trip
From dermatology patient guidance
Travel often means different clothing than usual: more formal occasions, colder or warmer conditions, less choice in a suitcase. The clothing and friction guide goes through what matters, body area by body area.
Questions you answer for yourself
Which clothes reliably work for me at home — and do they fit what the trip involves?
Is there anything on the itinerary I would otherwise dress for in a way that is difficult for me?
At home, when you shower and when you do laundry is usually settled. Away, both depend on the accommodation — and both change how much clothing has to travel with you.
Questions you answer for yourself
What does the accommodation have?
If laundry is not possible: how many changes do I need instead?
Access to a bathroom
Planning
If you may want to change supplies or freshen up during the day, bathroom access is a planning factor like any other — on long legs of a journey, on guided itineraries, or on day trips without fixed breaks.
Questions you answer for yourself
Where are the longest stretches without a break on this route?
What do I need in my bag so that changing supplies away from the room is possible?
Swimming and the beach
Planning
Whether swimming is suitable for you when lesions are open or draining is not something this page can answer — that belongs with your healthcare team and is worth raising at an appointment before the trip.
Either way, the practical question is worth asking: what would you need with you to look after things afterwards the way you already do?
If an appointment falls during the trip, or you are in regular contact, it helps to settle beforehand how you can reach each other and what can be moved.
A checklist cannot tell you whether a changing lesion needs medical attention. If symptoms are noticeably different from your usual HS, or you become acutely unwell, use the “when to get medical help” page or local healthcare services.
Across the European Union the emergency number is 112, free of charge from landlines and mobile phones. Other destinations have their own emergency numbers; this page deliberately keeps no country-by-country list.
You can tick items off as you pack. The ticks stay on this device.
Answer a few questions above and your checklist will appear here.
This plan is based on your own answers. It does not predict flares, does not assess your fitness to travel, and does not replace advice from your healthcare team.
Use this plan
There is deliberately no share link: nothing you select here is ever given an address on the internet.
For the journey: the PDF and the printout work with no connection. Whether the page itself reloads offline depends on your browser’s cache.
Did this checklist remind you of something you might otherwise have forgotten?
Medical content last editorially reviewed: · Next editorial review:
Travel rules last checked: · Next travel-rule check:
There is very little research specific to travelling with HS. What is said here about heat, sweating, friction and wound care rests on dermatology patient information that describes exactly those points as self-care.
No prediction follows from that: there is no evidence that a packing list, a clothing choice or a particular way of travelling prevents flares. These pages claim that nowhere.
The statements about aviation security, prescriptions and healthcare abroad reproduce official rules from the European Union and German federal authorities. Rules of that kind change more often than medical fundamentals — so they are verified on their own, shorter cycle, and both dates are shown separately below.
In case of doubt, what governs is always the information from your departure airport, your airline, the destination country, your health insurer and your healthcare team.
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