Page 189 - Prevention and Treatment of Incisional Hernia- New Techniques and Materials

Introduction
The EuraHS (European Registry for Abdominal Wall HerniaS) working group was formed under the auspices of the European Hernia Society (EHS) board in 2009. An online platform for registration and outcome measurement of operations for ventral abdominal wall hernias has been developed. For this, a set of de nitions and classi cations were proposed(1). The EuraHS working group organized a consensus meeting to prepare recommendations relating to the reporting of outcome results in abdominal wall hernia repair. At the initiative of the rst author, Filip Muysoms, current chairman of the EuraHS working group, and of Vincenzo Mandala, current president of the European Hernia Society, a consensus meeting was organized in Palermo, Italy from June 28th till June 30th 2012. The participants to this consensus discussion and meeting were the EuraHS Working Group members and some other experts, editors and a statistician. The participants to the consensus discussions are the authors of this manuscript.
Materials and methods
The scienti c methodology of clinical studies including systematic reviews and meta-analyses were discussed with researchers and a statistician invited to the consensus meeting. Recommendations relating to study methodology, description of the patient population and statistical approach were proposed to research on abdominal wall surgery. For taxonomy of the statistical items two basic textbooks on medical statistics were used(2, 3). Speci c recommendations on abdominal wall surgery for describing hernia variables, treatment variables and for reporting the outcome results in a uniform manner were formulated by consensus.
Results
Description of study methodology
A study describes a sample or cohort of patients. It is of utmost importance to know how the study population was decided upon, how the study was
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Recommendations IH research
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