Chronic bronchitis is a highly prevalent disease affecting more than 14 million individuals in the US alone. Patients with chronic bronchitis frequently experience acute exacerbations of the condition, the clinical management of which confers a major clinical and economic burden on healthcare systems. Total healthcare costs associated with acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis (AECB) have been estimated to cost $US1.7 billion annually in the US, with hospitalisation accounting for the largest share of this cost. Investigators from the US and Canada found that telithromycin has the potential to have a major effect on the cost of AECB in the US, and they presented their results at the 43rd Annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) [Chicago, US; September 2003].1