The progress achieved since the advent of Fluosol-DA is summarized in this paper, with special focus on the synthesis and evaluation of more adequate, reliable, industrially feasible fluorocarbons, structure/property relationships--molecular weight being recognized as the pre-eminent determining factor of both the fluorocarbon's excretion rate and the emulsion's stability-, the preparation of significantly more concentrated, more efficacious emulsions, etc. The key to further progress and better mastery of the emulsions' characteristics, especially in relation to increased shelf-life, prolonged i.v. persistence, and versatility, now lies in the development of new surfactants, better adapted to this objective. New families of well defined, monodisperse perfluoroalkylated polyhydroxylated surfactants derived from sugars and related compounds have been synthesized and fully characterized. Preliminary evaluation of their surface-active properties, emulsion stabilizing capacity and biocompatibility are reported.