Booking dialysis sessions in Antalya as a visitor: the six-week lead time, the serology results every unit asks for, session costs and the insurance trap.
25.08.2026
Three sessions a week, four hours each, is a schedule that does not pause for a summer holiday. For a long time that meant people on haemodialysis simply did not travel. It is no longer true, and Antalya is one of the more practical places in the Mediterranean to do it — units are dense along the coast, they are used to foreign patients, and the transfer distances from the resort areas are short.
What it requires is planning that starts about six weeks before departure. Almost everything that goes wrong with holiday dialysis goes wrong because someone booked the flights first and made the arrangements afterwards.
The first conversation is with your renal team at home. They confirm you are fit to fly, and they produce the paperwork that a Turkish unit needs before it will accept you. Without that file, no reputable centre will take a booking.
What travels with you is essentially a complete description of your treatment: your dialysis prescription — session length, frequency, dialysate composition, blood flow rate, dialyser type and anticoagulation — plus your dry weight, your access type and any history with it, your medication list, your recent blood results and a summary of your medical history. A letter from your consultant confirming fitness to travel goes with it.
Most home units are familiar with this and have a coordinator who handles it. Six weeks is the notice period they generally ask for; some can work faster, but that is the assumption to plan around.
This is the requirement that catches people out, and it is not negotiable anywhere.
Every dialysis unit needs current virology results before it will let you onto a machine: hepatitis B surface antigen, hepatitis B surface and core antibodies, hepatitis C antibodies and HIV. Units commonly want these dated within thirty days of your first session, which is a narrow window when the tests themselves take time to arrange and process.
The reason is machine allocation. Patients who are hepatitis B positive are dialysed on dedicated machines in a separate area, and those places are limited. A unit that has one isolation station and it is already taken cannot fit you in, no matter how much notice you gave. If your serology is positive for hepatitis B or C, say so at the first enquiry rather than at the point of booking — it changes which units can take you and makes early booking considerably more important.
Practically: ask your unit to run the virology roughly six to eight weeks before you travel, and the routine bloods about four weeks before. That sequencing is what most renal units advise, and it gets everything inside the windows.
Published prices for a single session in Antalya run from around 200 to 300 US dollars. Quotes for the region often include transport between your hotel and the unit, and typically cover the session itself along with a nephrologist review.
A two-week holiday means six sessions, so the dialysis line alone is usually somewhere between 1,200 and 1,800 dollars before anything else. That is the number to build the trip around.
Worth confirming in writing before you commit: whether transfers are included and from which areas, whether the price covers the medication given during the session — erythropoietin and iron are the usual questions — what happens if you need an extra unscheduled session, and whether payment is expected per session or upfront for the whole stay.
Standard travel insurance excludes pre-existing conditions, and planned dialysis is the definition of a pre-existing condition being treated. It will not be covered by an ordinary policy, and the sessions were never the point of insuring anyway — you are paying for them directly.
What you actually need cover for is everything else: a complication that puts you in hospital, an access problem, an unrelated emergency, repatriation. For that you need a policy from an insurer that specialises in pre-existing conditions and that has been told, in full, about your kidney failure and your dialysis.
Declare everything. A policy taken out without disclosing the condition is not merely reduced in scope — it can be void entirely, which leaves you uninsured for the ordinary risks of any holiday, not just the renal ones. This is the single most expensive mistake available in the whole process.
Sessions are usually offered in fixed shifts — a morning slot or an afternoon one — and you take what the unit has free. That means roughly three half-days of your two weeks are spoken for, plus travel each way.
Two things follow. Book the unit before you book the hotel, or at least before you commit to a non-refundable one, so that you are not staying ninety minutes away from the only clinic with space. And plan excursions around the schedule rather than hoping to move a session; units running at capacity have little flexibility, particularly in July and August, which is exactly when everyone wants to come.
Carry your medication in hand luggage, in original labelled packaging, with a copy of the prescription. Take more than the trip requires, in case of delays.
Carry a paper copy of your complete dialysis file as well as whatever has been emailed ahead — units lose emails, and arriving with the documents in hand solves it.
Fluid restriction is harder to keep on a travel day and in the heat, and Antalya in high summer is hot. Discuss this with your team before you go rather than improvising; it is a common reason people arrive at the first session significantly over their dry weight.
Also worth having: your access protected and the sequence of your sessions arranged so that you are not landing on a day when you are already due.
How far ahead should I book?
Six weeks is the standard advice, driven by the time needed to obtain and forward the virology results. For July and August, or if your serology requires an isolation machine, book earlier — capacity, not paperwork, becomes the limiting factor.
Will my usual dialysis prescription be followed exactly?
Generally yes, that is the point of sending it, though a unit may use a different dialyser or dialysate concentrate from the one you are used to. Any deviation should be discussed with you before the first session and, where it matters, with your home consultant.
Can I have dialysis in Antalya if I am hepatitis B or C positive?
Yes, but on dedicated machines, and the number of those places is limited. Declare it at the first enquiry so that only units able to accommodate you are approached, and allow more time than the standard six weeks.
Related reading
Planning a medical trip to Turkey
How to choose a clinic in Turkey
Turkey against other destinations
This page is general information, not medical advice. Fitness to fly, suitability for holiday dialysis and any change to your dialysis prescription are decisions for your own nephrology team and the treating unit.
Send us what you already have — the pathology report, imaging on disc, discharge summaries. A specialist at a partner hospital will review it and tell you what is realistic in your case and how quickly treatment could begin. Reviewing your documents costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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