Thank you again both of you for your replies. It would seem then it's a matter of exploring everything - he hasn't actually been diagnosed with AN yet, this is just my thinking. It's early stages for the V-Tach - the tilt table and Valsava test are out of the question at the moment because of that.

He has recently been given a work over for the obvious diabetes, B12, folate, autoimmune etc. and nothing shows. It never has, so it's always been idiopathic.

I suspect it's some kind of genetic dispostion - his father had both legs removed below the knew when he was in his fifties, for what was then called ciruculatory problems. He got an infection in both feet that turned gangranous(spelling?), and my husbands grandfather apparently always had painful feet which was called gout!

Linda