Abstract : Since 1996, the American Heart Association (AHA) publishes, with its year-end report, the list of 'The Ten Top Advances in Heart Disease and Stroke Research'. These milestones include the results of some major clinical trials, new medications, guidelines published during the past year, and innovative research work that can be very preliminary, but contains promising data for the years to come. It is not without interest to read the list of publications or presentations that were selected; one can indeed imagine that these contributions were, over the past twelve months, among the most significant in our specialty and that some of them will indeed exert a considerable influence on the practice of cardiology in the future. It is with pleasure that we observe that some of these publications were already analysed in our journal during 2003