Flying with ITP

I plan on flying  to FL soon. Has anyone had any experience to share on this? If you’ve flown, what were your platelet counts and did you have any issues?. Right now mine are around 30,000. I’m a little concerned because of the cabin pressure.

I was diagnosed April/May 1989 with a count of 11k & dropping - in July 1989 we moved to Tokyo and of course that was an airline flight,  I was on 60mg of prednisone & a low count (sorry can't tell you the # as I gave all my charts and notes to my new hematologist since he has lots of knowledge of ITP and he loves blood) - while overseas we flew to Hong Kong (and later moved there), Singapore, Beijing, Thailand, Cairo, Rome, London, Bermuda & more and back to the States a few times.  To be honest I never considered what my count was when I got on a plane - they let me move/fly to Tokyo shortly after diagnosis & on 60mg of pred so I never gave any other flights a thought.  I had no issues due to the long flights.   At that time no one was wearing masks on planes, but if I were to fly now I would be wearing a mask.

What does your hematologist have to say - have you talked to him/her about flying?

Good luck

I flew from UK to Australia and back. I asked my haemo what count I could fly at and she replied above 1. It was 21 when I flew back. I had no problems. 

Thank you, that’s great to hear. I’ve just been increased to 75 mg if Promacta. Last weeks count was 30k. Blood doc said flying shouldn’t be an issue unless counts were in single digits maybe. I read nothing online that said there was a connection with flying with low platelets and issues with change in cabin pressure resulting in bleeding events.

Thank you. I did the prednisone for nearly a year and it worked but had to go off. Then did 6 Rituxsin infusions. They worked for 5 months, then they dropped drastically.  I’m at 75 mg of Promacta now and hope it gets them to a level  I feel comfortable flying. Last week my count was 30k.

VVeenM  
I was diagnosed in Oct 2019 . I came to know of my condition only when I went for a regular check up in India . My platelets were at 25000 range and I am sure they might have been much lower than that when I flew to India ( It is a 18 hour trip ) . Even now mine are only in the 20000 range but I am not paying too much attention to the numbers now . I just want to stay off any medication or treatment for a while, planning to try Promacta if my condition worsens or when there is absolutely no other option.