A furious mum has accused medics of negligence by twice turning away her 12-year-old son from hospital despite him showing signs of pneumonia, including coughing up blood.

Lisa Hodgson, 31, claims her son Anthony’s potentially fatal chest condition was not diagnosed by Bradford Royal Infirmary doctors until they examined him for a third time when he was arrived back at the hospital by ambulance as his condition detoriorated.

Anthony then had to be rushed to Leeds General Infirmary for an operation to clear fluid from his lungs.

Last night he remained at LGI fitted to a chest drain.

Mrs Hodgson, of Orchid Close, Shipley, said: “It is disgusting the way they checked my son and sent him back home. They were negligent because he could have died. It’s very scary.”

Anthony, a pupil at Immanuel College, Thackley, first fell ill on Easter Sunday and was crying with belly ache and a temperature, according to his family.

His grandma Susan Keen said Anthony’s heart beat was at 139 beats-per-minute when an ambulance arrived to take him to BRI.

However, the youngster was diagnosed with a virus and sent home with ibuprofen and paracetamol, said Mrs Keen.

Two days later, Mrs Keen said Anthony was by then coughing up blood and screaming in agony. He was taken to BRI again and sent for an X-ray.

But Mrs Keen said: “The doctor checked the X-ray, prescribed codeine and sent him home again. I wanted them to get on top of things and I suggested he needed to be on a drip, but they said no, a 12-year-old could get home and feel better in 48 hours with tablets.”

Mrs Keen took Anthony home and lay with him in bed. Three hours later he was back at BRI.

“He wouldn’t let me leave him,” she said. “I had a feeling that something horrible was going to happen to my grandson.

“I rang NHS Direct and they told me to ring an ambulance. The ambulance man said Anthony had been sent home with fluid on his lungs and a chest infection.”

In the meantime, Anthony’s younger brother Harrison Ward, six, was also in BRI and had been diagnosed with pneumonia.

The family maintain this prompted doctors to check Anthony’s X-ray again and this time they diagnosed pneumonia. He was then transferred to LGI and underwent an operation last Sunday.

Mrs Keen, 51, said: “A nurse said it was a good job I was persistent, because it could have been a lot worse.

“They should have caught it a lot sooner. Three doctors looked at my 12-year-old grandson. I am not a medical person but I knew he was ill.

“It is negligence – I could have lost my grandson. It has made us angry and we are going to put in an official complaint.”

Harrison’s pneumonia was caught in time so he is doing well, say the family, and it did not progress like Anthony’s. A virus is believed to have been the cause in both cases.

Mrs Hodgson said: “No words can describe how I feel towards BRI.”

A spokesman for Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs BRI, said: “We cannot comment on individual cases but if Mrs Hodgson and her family would like to contact us and discuss their concerns we would be happy to address any issues with them directly.”