Surgical management of patients with ventral abdominal wall defects, especially complex abdominal wall defects, remains a challenging problem for abdominal wall reconstructive surgeons. Effective surgical treatment requires appropriate preoperative assessment, surgical planning, and correct operative procedure in order to improve postoperative clinical outcomes and minimize complications. Although substantial advances have been made in surgical techniques and prosthetic technologies, there is still insufficient high-level evidence favoring a specific technique. Broad variability in existing practice patterns, including clinical pre-operative evaluation, surgical techniques and surgical procedure selection, are still common.

With the purpose of providing a best practice algorithm, a comprehensive search was conducted in Medline and PubMed. Sixty-four surgeons considered as experts on abdominal wall defect repair and reconstruction in China were solicited to develop a Chinese consensus and give recommendations to help surgeons standardize their techniques and improve clinical results.

This consensus serves as a starting point to provide recommendations for adult ventral abdominal wall repair and reconstruction in China and may help build opportunities for international cooperation to refine AWR practice.