In recent years, some progress has been made in the research of severe acute pancreatitis, which has obvious influence on clinical diagnosis and treatment. An evidence-based international consensus statements on the management of severe acute pancreatitis (according to the GRADE quality of evidence criteria) was developed by a collaborative expert panel in the World Congress of Emergency Surgery held in 2018 in Bertinoro, Italy, and was published in the World Journal of Emergency Surgery in June 2019. The guidelines mainly comprise the following five topics: diagnosis, antibiotic treatment, management in the intensive care unit, surgical and operative management, and open abdomen. The guidelines thoroughly summarize and extract the principle of the clinical diagnosis and treatment of severe acute pancreatitis, and reflect the current status and future directions of the treatment of severe acute pancreatitis, so they are worth learning and using for reference.