Cefotaxime is a widely employed antibiotic in hospital practice, leading to an important economical cost. We analyse the adequacy of the indications of cefotaxime in our Internal Medicine Unit along a two month period. The records of the 54 patients treated with cefotaxime along a two month period were retrospectively reviewed to establish the adequacy of the prescriptions by checking them with a list of indications based on widely used bibliographical sources. Cefotaxime prescription was considered inadequate because of its inefficiency in 15 out of the 54 patients studied (28%). They were all patients admitted because of bronchitic relapses of chronic obstructive lung disease ("COLD") without radiological evidence of pneumonic consolidation. We calculate that using a more efficient antibiotic alternative could lead to a decrease of a 3.6 to 7.53% in the total pharmaceutical expenses of our unit along the study period. We conclude that the unnecessary routine use of cefotaxime may lead to an avoidable important increase in sanitary costs.