Urine cultures are frequently obtained from hospitalizedpatients,evenintheabsenceofurinarysymptoms.Asymptomatic bacteriuria is often treated in these patients, and accounts for a substantial burden of inappropriate antimicrobial use in hospitals. Effective strategies to improve urine culture ordering and antimicrobial utilization in hospitals need to be implemented.

As our understanding of the role of ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure in causing skin cancer continues to be enhanced, it is important that clinicians and researchers are familiar with the various methods for assessing photodamage to skin. This paper provides a systematic review of the published literature on invasive and noninvasive methods used to quantify lifetime UV exposure ('photoageing'). Clinical examination, histopathology, immunohistochemistry, skin surface topography and ultrasound, in addition to newer technologies such as reflectance confocal microscopy, optical coherence tomography and multiphoton tomography, are reviewed. It is concluded that histopathological solar elastosis alone should not be viewed as a 'gold standard' diagnostic test and that there is no single method available to give accurate quantification of the degenerative changes associated with photodamage. Although additional research into sensitivity and specificity is still needed, skin surface topography currently has the most support in the literature as a valid and reliable noninvasive tool for the assessment of photoageing.

Discontinuing routine processing of screening urine cultures prior to elective joint arthroplasty resulted in substantial reduction in urine cultures ordered and antimicrobial prescriptions for asymptomatic bacteriuria, without any significant impact on incidence of prosthetic joint infection. This simple change would be scalable across institutions with potential for significant healthcare savings.