[General principles of abdominal wall reconstruction--20 years of experience]

After 20 years of reconstructive abdominal wall surgery and almost five thousand surgical interventions for this pathology, most of them resolved with prosthesis, authors present a retrospective study concerning to increased biocompatibility, world dynamics of alloplastic solution and also the technical surgical problems that appears in incisional hernia repair. There are underlined two concepts: first--the maximal transversal diameter--that define the size of musculo-aponeurosis defect and the span of alloplastic substitution, in opposition to the old idea that allude to the size of hernia sack; the second concept--receptor prosthetic layer--define the interface between abdominal viscera and prosthetic material. This is not just a mechanical divider, being also a conjunctive and vascular support, helping prosthetic tissue integration.