Hariu M, et al. – This work is planned to assess the ability of time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS) to detect bacteria from blood culture (BC) broths, and compare the efficacy of TOF–MS to that of conventional culture methods. Observations suggest TOF–MS as a strong tool for the rapid and correct detection of pathogens from monomicrobial BC samples, though results need to be carefully checked when handling known or suspected polymicrobial samples.