Flying Home After a Mastectomy: Drains, Compression and How Long International Patients Stay

The suitcase sits open on the hotel bed, and the hardest thing to pack is the small plastic bulb clipped to the waistband. It has been six days since surgery. The return ticket is flexible, the family at home is asking, and nobody has quite said the words out loud: is flying after mastectomy this soon a sensible idea, or a risk dressed up as convenience?

It is one of the most common questions surgical nurses hear from people who traveled for their operation, and one of the least well answered online. Forum threads swing between alarm and bravado. Airlines publish general fitness-to-fly rules that never mention a drain or a seroma. What follows is the calmer version: what is actually happening under the dressing, what the evidence says about cabins, clots and swelling, and how the timing decision is usually made.

None of it replaces the conversation with your own surgeon. It should make that conversation shorter and sharper.

What actually happens in your body in the first two weeks after a mastectomy

A mastectomy removes all of the breast tissue from one side of the chest, leaving skin and muscle behind. Where the tissue used to be, the body does what it always does with an empty space: it fills it with fluid. That is why most people wake up with one or two surgical drains, thin flexible tubes that run from under the skin to a soft squeezable bulb outside the body. The bulb creates gentle suction and collects the fluid so the skin can settle flat against the chest wall.

Drain output is highest in the first two or three days and falls steadily. According to MedlinePlus, drains are usually removed within one to two weeks, once the daily volume drops below the threshold your team uses. Many people go home from the hospital within a day or two of the operation, as Mayo Clinic describes, which means most of that drain time is spent wherever you are staying, not on a ward.

The armpit is the other moving part. If the surgeon checked lymph nodes there, it was either a sentinel node biopsy, which removes the one to three nodes that drain the breast first, or an axillary dissection, which removes a larger group. The second produces more fluid, more numbness and a longer recovery, and it shapes every later decision about travel.

Skin edges usually seal within about two weeks, but the deeper tissue keeps gaining strength for months. Numbness across the chest and inner upper arm is expected, because small sensory nerves are cut during the operation. Some people notice a tight cord running down the arm a few weeks later, a condition called axillary web syndrome, which physiotherapy exercises usually ease.

How soon can I fly after mastectomy? What the evidence does and does not say

Here is the honest answer: no major guideline names a specific number of days. Mastectomy is chest wall surgery without an opened body cavity, so the concerns that shape air travel advice after abdominal or lung operations, mainly trapped gas expanding at altitude, do not apply in the same way. That leaves surgeons to work from first principles and from what they know about you.

In practice, most teams look for a handful of milestones before agreeing to a long flight. The drains are out, or there is a named clinician at the destination who will manage and remove them. The wound has been inspected at least once after discharge. Pain is controlled with medicines that do not leave you drowsy for a ten-hour sitting. You can walk the length of a cabin and lift a small bag into an overhead locker with the unaffected arm. Pathology results have been discussed, because those results determine whether radiation, chemotherapy or hormone therapy comes next, and that plan needs a team near your home.

Put those together and the arithmetic mostly does itself. If drains typically come out within one to two weeks, per MedlinePlus, and the first wound review happens around then, many people without reconstruction find themselves cleared somewhere in the second or third week. People with flap reconstruction, an axillary dissection or a wound problem are often asked to wait longer.

Flight length changes the calculation. A ninety-minute hop is a different physiological event from a transoceanic route. The CDC’s travel health guidance treats journeys longer than about four hours as the point where sitting still starts to raise clot risk, and recent surgery is on its list of factors that raise that risk further. Your surgeon will weigh both.

Who is usually cleared to travel early, and who is usually asked to wait

Two people can leave the same operating room on the same morning and receive opposite advice about the airport. The difference is rarely about how they feel and mostly about what the surgeon did and what might still go wrong.

People who tend to be cleared sooner have had a mastectomy without reconstruction, a sentinel node biopsy rather than a full dissection, drains that emptied quickly and came out on schedule, a wound that looks calm at the first check, and no personal history of blood clots. They are steady on their feet and are not relying on sedating pain relief.

People who are usually asked to stay longer fall into recognisable groups:

• Reconstruction using tissue from the abdomen, back or thigh, because there is now a second surgical site and the transferred tissue’s blood supply is watched closely in the first days.
• Tissue expanders, temporary implants that are gradually filled to stretch the skin, when the first fill is due before a local team is in place.
• Axillary dissection with persistent high drain output.
• Any sign of wound infection, skin edge breakdown or a collection that has needed draining with a needle more than once.
• A previous deep vein thrombosis or a known clotting disorder.
• Pathology that has changed the treatment plan, where the team wants to make decisions face to face before handing over.

None of these is a ban. They are reasons for a longer conversation, and often for a shorter, better-organised handover to a clinician at home. What matters is that someone at the destination knows you are arriving, has your operation note, and is expecting to see the wound.

Flying with surgical drains: possible, but rarely the plan

There is nothing about a closed suction drain that an aircraft cabin damages. The tubing is sealed, the bulb is soft plastic, and the small pressure change during climb and descent does not disturb it. So the question is not whether a drain can fly. It is whether you should be several thousand miles from the person who put it in while it is still in.

Drains create three practical problems for travellers. Someone has to remove them, and that is done by a clinician who judges the output, checks the skin around the tube and pulls it out with a firm steady motion; it is not a self-service task. Output has to be measured and written down each day, because that log is what tells the team the drain has done its job. And the entry site is a small open doorway through the skin, so it needs to be kept clean and watched for redness or cloudy fluid, which is harder to manage in an aircraft lavatory than at home.

Some surgical teams will agree to a flight with drains still in place when a named nurse or doctor at the destination has confirmed in writing that they will take over. Others will not, and both positions are reasonable. If your team does agree, ask for a printed copy of the operation note, the drain output chart so far, and the threshold at which the drain should be removed, so nothing depends on memory.

For the flight itself, a loose top, the bulb secured to clothing rather than dangling, and a small measuring cup and spare dressings in hand luggage are the entire kit. Empty and record before boarding and after landing.

Seroma and air travel: does cabin pressure make the swelling worse?

A seroma is a pocket of clear or straw-coloured fluid that collects under the skin after surgery, often in the space where the breast was or in the armpit. Cleveland Clinic describes it as common after mastectomy and lymph node surgery, and notes that small ones are usually reabsorbed over weeks while larger or uncomfortable ones may be drawn off with a needle in clinic.

The worry people bring to forums is specific: will the lower air pressure at cruising altitude make the seroma balloon or burst? The physics says no. Airliner cabins are pressurised to roughly the equivalent of 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level, as the CDC’s Yellow Book explains, and that drop does cause gas to expand, which is why ears pop and sealed snack packets puff up. A seroma, though, is liquid. Liquids do not expand meaningfully with small pressure changes, so the pocket that boards the aircraft is the pocket that lands.

What can happen is more mundane. Sitting for hours with the arm held still can make the area feel tighter and more aware, and swelling from gravity in the hand and forearm is common on long flights in anyone. That is discomfort, not danger.

The things that should change your plans have nothing to do with altitude. A seroma that is growing day on day, skin over it that turns red or hot, fluid leaking through the incision, or a fever are signs of infection or a collection under tension, and those need to be seen before you fly, not after. A stable seroma that your team has examined is generally not a reason on its own to delay a journey; the decision still rests with them.

Compression after mastectomy: what a post-surgical bra, a binder and flight stockings each do

The word compression covers at least three different garments after breast surgery, and they do different jobs. Confusing them leads to people wearing the wrong thing on the wrong part of the body.

A post-surgical bra is soft, front-fastening and without underwire. Its role is support: holding dressings in place, limiting the pull of movement on a fresh incision, and giving the skin something to settle against. Some teams add a chest binder or elastic wrap in the first days after reconstruction or when they are trying to limit fluid build-up. Evidence that chest compression reliably prevents seroma is mixed, so its use varies between surgeons, and you should follow the instructions you were given rather than a general rule.

Flight stockings are a leg garment and have nothing to do with the chest. The CDC’s guidance on blood clots during travel suggests properly fitted, graduated compression stockings that reach below the knee for travellers at increased clot risk, and recent surgery within the previous three months is one of the risk factors on its list. Fit matters: a stocking that rolls or bunches can do more harm than good, which is why it is worth being measured rather than guessing.

Compression sleeves for the arm are for people who already have lymphoedema, or who have been assessed and prescribed one. The NCI’s lymphoedema guidance is clear that garments need professional fitting, because an ill-fitting sleeve can act like a tourniquet at the top and trap fluid rather than move it. Buying one online to wear “just in case” on the flight home is a common instinct and not a supported one.

The short version: chest support as your team instructed, leg stockings if your clot risk warrants them, arm sleeve only if fitted.

Blood clots on long flights after breast surgery: the risk that deserves the most attention

If one topic in this article changes how you plan the journey, let it be this one. A deep vein thrombosis is a clot forming in a deep vein, usually the calf or thigh; a pulmonary embolism is a piece of that clot travelling to the lungs. Together they are the most serious preventable complication of long-distance travel after an operation.

The CDC frames the risk plainly. For most travellers on flights of more than four hours, the absolute risk is small. It rises with each factor you add, and someone flying home after a mastectomy may carry several at once: surgery within the past three months, an active cancer diagnosis, hormone-based treatment, dehydration from a long day, reduced mobility because moving the arm hurts, and a window seat that discourages getting up.

Prevention is unglamorous and effective. The CDC recommends standing and walking every two to three hours on long flights, and doing calf exercises while seated: pressing the heels down and raising the toes, then reversing, repeated in sets. An aisle seat makes movement easier. Water beats alcohol, and heavy sedatives that would keep you asleep and still for many hours are worth discussing with your team beforehand.

Medication is where the decision becomes individual. Some surgeons prescribe a short course of a blood-thinning medicine around a long flight for people they judge to be at higher risk; many do not, because for lower-risk travellers the bleeding risk is not worth it. This is a conversation to have before booking, not at the gate, and whatever is decided should come from the prescribing clinician who knows your history.

Know the warning signs before you board: calf pain or swelling on one side, sudden breathlessness, chest pain, or coughing blood. Those are emergencies at any altitude.

Lymphedema and flying: what the research actually shows about arm swelling

Lymphoedema is persistent swelling, most often of the arm on the operated side, that develops when lymph fluid cannot drain properly because nodes or channels were removed or scarred. It can appear months or years after treatment, and the NCI’s lymphoedema summary identifies axillary dissection and radiation to the armpit as the main drivers of risk. Sentinel node biopsy carries a considerably lower risk than a full dissection.

For decades, people were told that flying could trigger lymphoedema and that a compression sleeve was essential on every flight. The evidence behind that advice was thin, and more recent research has not confirmed a clear link between air travel and the onset of arm swelling in people who do not already have it. Reduced cabin pressure and prolonged sitting can cause temporary puffiness in anyone’s hands and feet, which is different from lymphoedema and settles after landing.

Two groups still need care. People who already have lymphoedema should wear the garment they were fitted with, on the flight and afterwards, exactly as their lymphoedema specialist advised. People who have had an axillary dissection or are due for radiation to the armpit should ask their team whether they want any specific precautions on long flights; answers vary, and that variation reflects genuine uncertainty rather than one team being right.

Sensible habits cost nothing. Avoid heavy shoulder bags and tight watch straps on the operated side, move the arm and shoulder through their comfortable range every hour, keep skin moisturised because dry cracked skin is an infection route, and treat any cut or insect bite on that arm with soap, water and attention.

Swelling that persists for more than a few days after landing, a feeling of heaviness, or rings and sleeves that suddenly do not fit are the signs worth reporting.

How long do international patients usually stay near the hospital before flying home?

People who travel for a mastectomy tend to ask this question expecting a number of days. What they actually receive from a good surgical team is a list of milestones, and the number of days is whatever it takes to reach them. The table pulls together the typical ranges that mainstream sources give and shows why each one matters before a long journey.

Milestone	Typical range	Why it matters before a long flight	Source
Discharge from hospital	Within a day or two	Confirms pain, mobility and drains are manageable outside a ward	Mayo Clinic
Drains removed	Usually within 1–2 weeks	Removes the main reason a clinician must see you daily	MedlinePlus
First wound check after discharge	Set by the team, often around drain removal	Catches infection, skin edge problems or a seroma under tension	NHS
Pathology results discussed	Typically at an early follow-up visit	Decides whether radiation, chemotherapy or hormone therapy follows	Mayo Clinic
Heavy lifting avoided	Around 4–6 weeks	Shapes how you handle luggage and who travels with you	MedlinePlus
Raised clot risk after surgery	Up to 3 months	Frames precautions on any flight over about 4 hours	CDC

Read across the rows and a pattern appears. For a mastectomy without reconstruction, the drains-out and first-review milestones usually land in the second week, so that is when many people are cleared. Flap reconstruction, expanders or an axillary dissection push the timeline out because there are more things to check. The clot risk row does not delay travel on its own, but it explains why the flight home, whenever it happens, should be treated as a medical event rather than a routine journey.

None of these ranges is a promise. They are the typical experience described by mainstream sources, and your own surgeon may reasonably ask for more or less time.

What the days and weeks after flying home usually look like

Landing is not the finish line. It is the moment care changes hands, and the weeks that follow have their own shape.

The first days at home are often more tiring than people expect. Travel itself is exhausting, and surgery adds a background fatigue that can last several weeks. The NHS recovery guidance describes gentle arm and shoulder exercises starting soon after surgery and continuing daily; they prevent the shoulder from stiffening and are the single most useful thing you control. Numbness across the chest and inner arm is normal and may partly improve over months, though some areas stay numb permanently.

Somewhere in the first week at home, a local clinician should look at the wound. If drains came out just before travel, the small holes they left usually close within days. A stable seroma may still be present and is generally left alone unless it is uncomfortable.

By weeks four to six, most people are back to ordinary daily tasks. MedlinePlus advises avoiding heavy lifting for about four to six weeks, which in real terms means someone else handles the suitcase and the grocery bags for a while. Driving usually resumes when you can turn the wheel and brake sharply without pain and are no longer taking sedating medication; your team will tell you when that is.

The larger timeline is set by pathology. Radiation, when needed, typically begins once the wound has healed; chemotherapy and hormone therapy have their own schedules. All of these require an oncology team near where you live, and arranging that referral before you fly, rather than after, is what turns a smooth surgical recovery into a smooth overall treatment.

Scars soften over many months. Cording, if it appears, usually responds to stretching. Ask who to contact for physiotherapy locally.

Getting through airport security with drains, a tissue expander or a prosthesis

Security screening is a small source of large anxiety for people travelling soon after breast surgery, and most of the worry can be settled with a little knowledge and one piece of paper.

Surgical drains sit under clothing and contain plastic and fluid, neither of which triggers a metal detector. Body scanners may show them as an unexplained shape, in which case an officer will usually ask what it is and may do a light pat-down over clothing. You are entitled to ask for that to happen in a private room, and to have a companion present.

A tissue expander is a temporary, adjustable implant placed under the chest muscle and filled over several visits to stretch the skin before a permanent implant. Many expanders contain a small magnetic port that guides the filling needle. That magnet is the reason your team told you to avoid MRI scans while it is in; it is not strong enough to concern a walk-through metal detector, though it may register. A printed card from your surgeon naming the device and its manufacturer’s model, kept in hand luggage, shortens every conversation.

External breast prostheses, whether silicone or lightweight foam, are common and familiar to screening staff. Some people prefer to say at the start of screening that they are wearing one; others do not, and both are fine. If a hand search is requested, you can ask that it be done privately.

Medicines should travel in their original labelled containers in hand luggage, with a copy of the prescription. Dressings, a small measuring cup for drain output and spare compression garments raise no issues. The goal is simple: nothing that matters to your recovery goes in the hold, and nothing that matters to security is a surprise.

Tamoxifen, other hormone therapy and flying: what to ask before you board

Many people leave the pathology conversation with a plan for hormone therapy, and some start it before they travel. The question that follows, usually typed into a search bar late at night, is whether that medicine and a long flight are a safe combination.

The concern is specific and real. Tamoxifen belongs to a class of medicines called selective estrogen receptor modulators; it blocks estrogen’s effect on breast tissue while acting somewhat like estrogen elsewhere in the body, including on the clotting system. The recognised consequence is a modestly increased risk of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Aromatase inhibitors, the other main class used after menopause, lower estrogen production rather than blocking it, and are not associated with the same clot signal, though they bring their own side effects such as joint stiffness.

Layer that on top of the CDC’s list of travel clot risk factors, which already includes recent surgery, cancer and estrogen-containing medicines, and the arithmetic points in one direction: someone recently operated on, with a cancer diagnosis, taking tamoxifen, on a flight over four hours is in a higher-risk group than the average passenger.

What that does not mean is that you should stop the medicine before flying, or skip doses around the journey. Hormone therapy works over years, and interrupting it on your own has consequences that no flight justifies. The decision about whether to start before or after travel, and whether any additional clot precaution is warranted, belongs to the oncologist prescribing it.

Questions worth asking: given my flight length, does my clot risk change how you want me to prepare? Should the start date move? Are graduated stockings appropriate for me, and where do I get fitted? Write the answers down; jet lag is unkind to memory.

What people often get wrong about flying after a mastectomy

Recovery forums are generous with reassurance and short on physiology. A few beliefs come up so often that they deserve a direct correction.

“Cabin pressure will make my seroma burst.” It will not. Seromas are fluid, and fluid does not expand at cabin altitude the way gas does. Infection or a rapidly enlarging collection are reasons for concern; the aircraft is not.

“Two weeks is the rule.” No guideline sets a fixed interval. Two weeks is simply when drains and first reviews tend to be finished for a straightforward mastectomy, per the typical ranges in MedlinePlus, and it stretches with reconstruction, axillary dissection or complications.

“I must wear an arm sleeve on every flight or I will get lymphoedema.” The evidence for flights triggering lymphoedema in people who do not have it is weak, and the NCI cautions that unfitted garments can cause harm. Sleeves are for established lymphoedema or a specialist’s prescription.

“A double mastectomy is safer, so it is becoming standard.” Removing a healthy second breast when cancer is in one has become more common in some countries, but for people at average risk it has not been shown to improve survival; the main benefit is peace of mind for some, and it comes with a bigger operation and longer recovery. Mayo Clinic’s overview sets this out plainly. People with a strong inherited risk are a different case and are counselled individually.

“Flying spreads cancer.” There is no evidence for this. Air travel does not move cancer cells around the body.

“I can manage the drain myself and pull it out when the output is low.” Drain removal is a clinical procedure. The person who does it also inspects the site and decides whether a seroma is likely to follow.

Questions to ask your care team before booking a flight home

The most useful travel conversation with a surgeon is the one that happens before the ticket exists. Booking first and asking second turns a medical decision into a negotiation, and nobody does their best thinking under a cancellation deadline. These questions cover the ground that actually determines the answer.

• What milestones do you want me to reach before a flight of this length, and roughly when do you expect them?
• If my drains are still in, would you agree to travel with a named clinician at home taking over, and what paperwork would they need?
• Do I have a seroma now, and if so, is it stable enough to leave, or do you want to draw it off first?
• Given my surgery, my diagnosis and any hormone therapy, where do I sit on the clot risk scale, and does that change what you want me to do on the flight?
• Should I be fitted for graduated compression stockings, and is there any reason you would consider a short course of a blood-thinning medicine around travel?
• Which chest garment do you want me to wear, for how long, and is there anything you specifically do not want me to wear?
• Am I due for radiation, chemotherapy or hormone therapy, and has a referral to a team near my home been made?
• Who reviews my wound in the first week after I land, and what should they be looking for?
• What is the weight limit for lifting with each arm, and for how long?
• Can I have a printed copy of my operation note, pathology report, medication list and any device card, in a language my home clinicians read?
• Who do I contact if something goes wrong at the airport or in the air, and who do I contact once I am home?

Bring someone to write down the answers. Take a photo of the wound before you leave so a clinician at home has a baseline to compare against.

When to call your doctor: red flags before, during and after the flight

Most people travel home uneventfully. The point of knowing the warning signs is not to expect trouble; it is to recognise the rare case quickly, because several of these problems get worse fast.

Before you fly, contact your surgical team the same day if you notice any of the following. Redness spreading outward from the incision, or skin over the chest or armpit that feels hot to the touch. Cloudy, foul-smelling or blood-stained fluid from the wound or drain site. A fever, or shaking chills. A seroma or bruise that is visibly larger than the day before, or that feels tight and painful. A wound edge that has opened. Pain that is getting worse rather than better despite taking your prescribed medicines as directed. Any of these is a reason to postpone the flight until a clinician has seen you.

During or after the flight, the signs that need emergency care, at the destination airport or by calling the local emergency number, are: sudden shortness of breath, chest pain that worsens when you breathe in, coughing up blood, fainting, or a calf that is painful, swollen or warm on one side. These can indicate a clot in the leg or lung and are treated as emergencies regardless of how recent the surgery was.

In the weeks after landing, arrange to be seen promptly for: persistent swelling, heaviness or tightness in the arm or hand on the operated side; a new hard lump under the skin near the scar; numbness that is spreading rather than fading; or a shoulder you cannot lift above chest height despite doing your exercises.

When in doubt, make the call. Surgical teams would far rather hear about a false alarm than learn about a real one late, and none of these decisions should be made alone in a hotel room or an aircraft seat.

Frequently asked questions

How soon can I fly after a mastectomy?

There is no fixed guideline interval. Most surgical teams want the drains out, which typically happens within one to two weeks, a wound check completed, and pathology results discussed before a long flight. Reconstruction, an axillary dissection or any wound problem usually extends that. Short flights are judged differently from journeys over four hours, where clot risk rises. The decision sits with your surgeon, who knows your operation and history.

Can you fly with surgical drains still in?

Physically, yes; the drain is a sealed system that cabin pressure does not affect. The practical problem is who removes it, monitors output and checks the site for infection once you land. Some teams agree to travel with drains when a named clinician at the destination has confirmed they will take over; others prefer to wait. Ask your surgeon directly and carry the drain output chart and operation note if you do travel.

Does a seroma get worse on a plane? (seroma and air travel)

Not because of altitude. Cabin pressure changes cause gas to expand, but a seroma is a pocket of fluid, and fluid does not expand meaningfully at cruising height. Sitting still for hours may make the area feel tighter, which settles afterwards. The signs that matter are a seroma growing day on day, redness or heat over it, leaking fluid or fever; those need review before you fly, not after.

Will flying cause lymphedema? (lymphedema and flying)

The evidence linking air travel to the onset of lymphoedema in people who do not already have it is weak and inconsistent. The main risk factors are axillary dissection and radiation to the armpit, not flights. Temporary hand puffiness on long journeys is common in everyone and is not lymphoedema. People with established lymphoedema should wear their fitted garment as usual; others should ask their team rather than buying an unfitted sleeve.

How long after a mastectomy can you lift your arms?

Gentle arm and shoulder exercises usually start within the first days after surgery and are encouraged daily to prevent stiffness. Lifting the arm through its comfortable range is expected early; lifting weight is different. MedlinePlus advises avoiding heavy lifting for about four to six weeks, and teams often set a specific weight limit. Reconstruction or an axillary dissection can change these timelines, so follow the instructions you were given.

How common is a double mastectomy?

Removing both breasts when cancer is found in only one has become more common in some countries over recent decades, driven partly by personal preference and partly by genetic testing. For people at average risk, it has not been shown to improve survival compared with treating the affected breast, and it means a larger operation and longer recovery. People with a strong inherited risk are counselled individually, where the balance can differ.

What is the survival rate for mastectomy surgery?

Survival after breast cancer is determined mainly by the cancer’s stage, biology and the full treatment plan, not by the operation on its own. For early breast cancer, mastectomy and breast-conserving surgery followed by radiation have been shown in long-term trials to give equivalent survival, which is why the choice is often about preference and anatomy. Any figure that applies to you should come from your oncologist, who knows your pathology.

Should I wear compression stockings on the flight home?

Possibly, and it is worth asking. The CDC suggests properly fitted, graduated below-knee compression stockings for travellers at increased clot risk on flights over about four hours, and recent surgery, cancer and hormone therapy are all on its risk list. Fit matters, because a stocking that rolls can restrict flow. Your surgeon or oncologist can tell you whether your risk warrants them and where to be measured.

Do I need to stop tamoxifen before flying?

Do not stop or skip it on your own. Tamoxifen carries a modestly increased clot risk, and combined with recent surgery and a long flight that places you in a higher-risk group, but hormone therapy works over years and interrupting it has consequences. The right approach is to tell the prescribing oncologist your flight length and ask whether they want any additional precautions, such as stockings, extra mobility or timing of the start date.

Will a tissue expander set off airport security?

It may register on a metal detector or show on a body scanner, because many expanders contain a small magnetic port used to guide filling. That magnet is the reason MRI is avoided while it is in, but it poses no safety issue at security. Carry a printed card from your surgeon describing the device, and know that you can ask for any additional screening to be done privately with a companion present.

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.