The Editors of Revista Medica de chile are taking steps aimed to improve the "visibility" of this journal and to stimulate local and foreign authors to submit better original articles, appealing to a broader and international readership. Until now, the journal's editorial policy has been to stress its educational role, focused in Chilean readers and authors. In the recent years, an increasing number of research articles is being received, including manuscripts from North America, Europe and other Latinamerican countries. This is explainable, in part, by the fact that this journal is indexed in MEDLINE, ISI (Current Contents/Clinical Medicine) and several other major databases. The Revista is also one of the oldest medical journals in the world, published since 1872. In this issue of the Revista we welcome the new members of an "International Advisory Committee", with prominent physicians, scientists and teachers from the U.S.A. and Europe. They accepted to advise the Editors in their task, to submit review articles, state-of-the-art or position papers on topics of their own interest, and to help in the assessment of some manuscripts. We thank them warmly for their enthusiastic response to out invitation.