MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry has become a reference method for the routine identification of bacterial isolates in clinical microbiology laboratories around the world. Its high specificity, user-friendliness and cost-efficiency, together with its ability to provide reliable results in less than 5 min have favoured its implementation and further development. The amount of microbial species that can be identified by MALDI-TOF routinely has increased in the last few years and now it is possible to reliably identify non-tuberculous mycobacteria or closely-related species of Nocardia spp. Yeasts, both belonging to Candida and non-Candida genera can also be identified by MALDI-TOF, as well as filamentous fungi. In the latter case, both sample preparation methods and the available databases have been important factors in achieving accurate identifications at the species level.

The expertise acquired over time has allowed researchers to identify microorganisms directly from clinical samples, facilitating improved management of infected patients. This expertise has also been applied to the development of a MALDI-TOF-based methodology for the detection of different antimicrobial resistance mechanisms. Therefore, future applications such as bacterial strain typing, or the detection of virulence markers seems feasible to perform with this technology. Furthermore, other emerging mass spectrometry and spectroscopy technologies may assist MALDI-TOF in the near future to carry out important tasks that nowadays are performed by time-consuming and labour-intensive methods.

MALDI-TOF质谱法已成为全球临床微生物实验室常规鉴定细菌分离株的参考方法。其高特异性、用户友好性和成本效益，以及在不到 5 分钟内提供可靠结果的能力，有利于其实施和进一步发展。MALDI-TOF 可常规识别的微生物种类数量在过去几年中有所增加，现在可以可靠地识别非结核分枝杆菌或诺卡氏菌的密切相关物种。酵母菌，属于念珠菌属和非念珠菌属属也可以通过 MALDI-TOF 以及丝状真菌进行鉴定。在后一种情况下，样品制备方法和可用数据库都是实现物种水平准确识别的重要因素。

随着时间的推移获得的专业知识使研究人员能够直接从临床样本中识别微生物，从而有助于改善对感染患者的管理。这种专业知识也已应用于开发基于 MALDI-TOF 的方法，以检测不同的抗菌素耐药性机制。因此，未来的应用，如细菌菌株分型，或毒力标记的检测，似乎可以用这项技术进行。此外，其他新兴的质谱和光谱技术可能会在不久的将来协助 MALDI-TOF 执行当今通过费时费力的方法执行的重要任务。