Britons are living longer and longer, perhaps mitigating fears over the risk of the UK's recent obesity epidemic, according to the Nursing Times.

One medical expert, Professor David Leon - from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine - claimed it could be the reduction in smoking and an improvement in medical treatment that helped the figures relating to early deaths drop.

This may please those in nurse manager jobs, who can feel safe in the knowledge that their staff are doing everything possible to provide the highest quality of care for patients.

According to BBC News, cardiovascular-related deaths in the UK had seen "some of the largest and most rapid falls of any Western European country, partly due to improvement in treatment as well as reductions in smoking and other risk factors."

Professor Leon noted that the majority of Western countries had also seen their life expectancy levels improve: "Despite what many may have assumed, and without being complacent, current trends in European life expectancy are in a positive direction."

"But while the European experience since 1980 underlines the centrality of the social, political and economic determinants of health, many intriguing and important questions remain unanswered about the drivers of these extraordinary trends."

In 2007, an American's average life expectancy was 78 years, compared to 80 for Britons.