Preferred Reporting Of Case Series in Surgery (PROCESS) 2023 guidelines

The Preferred Reporting Of CasE Series in Surgery (PROCESS) guidelines were developed in 2016 in order to improve the reporting quality of surgical case series. Since its inception, it has been updated twice, in 2018 and 2020, and has been cited over 1000 times. PROCESS guidelines have enjoyed great acceptance within the surgical research community. Our aim is to update the PROCESS guidelines in order to maintain its applicability in the field of surgical research.

A PROCESS 2023 steering group was created. By working in collaboration, members of this group came up with proposals to update the PROCESS 2020 guidelines. These proposals were presented to an expert panel of researchers, who in turn scrutinised these proposals and decided whether they should become part of PROCESS 2023 guidelines or not, through a Delphi consensus exercise.