A DAD may have just a few months to live after a Liverpool hospital misdiagnosed his lung cancer and allowed it to spread.

Philip Mills, 53, from Allerton, was told by doctors at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital in Broadgreen that his cancer was “just an inflammation”.

Had the dad-of-three been correctly diagnosed, his tumour could have been removed.

Now it has spread to both lungs and his lymph nodes and doctors said Mr Mills could have just a few months to live.

Key checkup scans were missed because his report was “misfiled”.

He said: “It makes me so angry that they could let me down so badly. I am paying with my life for their mistakes.

“I believe people deserve to know what happened, because what I have gone through is the worst thing in the world.

“No-one used to admire the NHS as much as me, but now? People who I trusted have failed me and destroyed my life, simple as that.”

Mr Mills, who used to be the director of a plumbing parts manufacturer, was born with a congenital heart defect and has had three open heart surgeries during his life.

He suffered palpitations and shortness of breath in September 2010 and had a CT scan the following January, which should have identified the cancer.

Doctors recommended that further scans should take place in the following months but because of a “misfiling” error these did not happen.

It took nearly 12 months after another referral for Mr Mills’s lung cancer to be diagnosed.

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