In February 2019 in Frankfurt, Germany, the Advisory Board of the International Society of Fluorescence-Guided Surgery (ISFGS) unanimously voted to conduct a series of Delphi surveys across multiple surgical fields as a first step towards drafting consensus guidelines.
The first of these surveys, on its general use, has already been published in Annals of Surgery in April 2022. This special edition of Surgery: Fluorescent Guided Surgery reports the methodology and results of six surveys, all conducted in 2020-2021, evaluating current beliefs and practices on fluorescence imaging spanning six distinct surgical scenarios: (1) laparoscopic cholecystectomy; (2) anastomosis assessments and SLN mapping during colorectal surgery; (3) lymphedema surgery; (4) SLN mapping during gastric cancer surgery; (5) tissue perfusion assessments during plastic surgery; and (6) parathyroid gland protection during thyroid and parathyroid resections. 
The Delphi survey methodology was adopted for each survey, both because this approach has been widely used to identify areas of consensus and non-consensus among experts since the 1950s and has gained broad support among survey experts; and because it would permit experts from around the world to express their opinions anonymously and uninfluenced by other survey participants, thereby minimizing the risk of acquiescence bias.