Women with suspected breast cancer will be referred for specialist treatment within two weeks, the government has promised.

The Department of Health has announced a new target for GP referrals to specialists in cases which are deemed urgent.

The move comes as two studies published in The Lancet show that women who suffer a delay of more than three months between diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer are less likely to survive after five years than those with shorter delays.

However, another paper found no substantial impact between survival rates for people whose initial treatment was delayed by over two months.

And an editorial in The Lancet said the government's "obsession with speed" of referrals was misguided.

Anxiety

Launching the government's strategy, health minister Baroness Hayman said: "Delays can cause tremendous anxiety for women and there is now clear evidence that minimising delays in treating women could mean that more women with breast cancer will be successfully treated.

The BBC's former keep fit guru Diana Moran, who developed breast cancer in the 1980s, helped launch the initiative.

She said: " I am delighted by this new development. One of the worst things about finding a breast lump is waiting and worrying until you can see an expert.

"Cutting the waiting time to see a specialist can only be a good thing for women struggling to cope during this anxious time."

Hospitals and GPs have been gearing up to the new targets over recent months.

The government has published guidance on how to meet them.

Some 14,000 women a year die from breast cancer in the UK.

Breast cancer deaths have been falling in the last decade. Between 1986 and 1992, they fell by 6.5%.

The government says it has invested �20m in breast cancer services over the past 18 months to speed up diagnosis and improve treatment.

This includes the funding of one-stop shops for diagnosis.

Research

The Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which was behind two of The Lancet's studies, said up to 500 deaths a year could be prevented if women were treated within six months of symptoms developing.

The studies were carried out by researchers at St Thomas' Hospital in London who studied 87 papers on 100,000 breast cancer patients from around the world.

They found that women who suffered delays of three months or more were 12% less likely to survive after five years.

Women who suffered delays of more than three months but less than six had a 5% lower five-year survival rate.

They also found that older women, those from ethnic minorities and those with less education tended to take longer to go to the doctor once they had discovered symptoms.

In contrast, doctors were less likely to refer younger women for specialist treatment if they had symptoms other than a lump in their breast.

The researchers argue that "an understanding of the factors that influence delay is important for the development of strategies to shorten delays".

However, in a separate study of more than 36,000 patients' records, Mr Richard Sainsbury, a consultant at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, found that delays between referral by a GP and initial treatment had no significant effect on survival rates.

He concluded: "The drive for all women with possible breast cancer to be seen within 14 days will divert resources from other services."

These include ensuring that all people with breast cancer receive optimum treatment.

'Obsession with speed'

In an editorial in The Lancet, Alan Coates of the Australian Cancer Society says the government's "obsession with speed" for referrals from GPs to specialists may be misguided.

He writes: "Breast cancer is not a medical emergency.

"Adequate resources for care appropriate to the medical demands of the disease, and to the psychological needs of the patient, are likely to yield better returns than an obsession with speed.

"Getting it right is more important than getting rid of it fast."

He believes the difference in the two research teams' findings may be down to the fact that delay is usually measured from the date of diagnosis rather than the onset of symptoms, and the fact that some breast cancers develop more rapidly than others.