The difficulties of acute or delayed failure of fascial healing after laparotomies are of great socioeconomic relevance. Despite a plurality of publications in the last decades, the incidence of burst abdomen (1-3%) and incisional hernia (10-15%) remained unchanged. The generally accepted cause is a multifactorial event with a large number of influencing factors. Therefore, only interdisciplinary cooperations are a match for the scientific complexity of this topic. A still underestimated problem is the description of wound healing factors influencing the microclimate in fascial healing. New aspects of pharmacotherapy and better understanding of collagen synthesis and dynamics of closure tension might improve the clinical situation in the future.