The application discloses a method of determining the severity of symptoms in a patient comprising (i) producing a triage score, such as an early warning score (EWS) modified early warning score (MEWS), paediatric early warning score (PEWS), NHS early warning score (NEWS), simple clinical score (SCS), rapid emergency score (REMS) or mortality in emergency department sepsis score for the patient, (ii) measuring an amount of free light chains (FLC), preferably combined free light chains (cFLC), in a sample from the patient, and (iii) using the triage score and the amount of FLC measured to assess the severity of symptoms in the patient. This also allows patients to be triaged to provide better treatment of them.