Have you ever had spinal anesthesia?

Why don't professional athletes use local anesthesia during games?

• Okay, so, I have actually sprained my ankle very badly before. I was in a full sprint and I landed on the side of my foot. literally, the bottom of my shoe made a 90 degree angle with the ground. the swelling was the size of a baseball/softball and remained that size for about 3 days before finally starting to shrink. Onto professional sports. the way I look it is: From personal experience, if your ankle/wrist is sprained, it is not inhibiting your movement; you still have your full range of motion, the only reason you don't exercise this range of motion is because it hurts really bad to do so. But if you were to apply local anesthesia, from my understanding, it would completely remove the sensation of pain (without making you high, so it would remove pain while also leaving you sober) while still allowing your brain to communicate with it and tell it to do things such as pivot, rotate, run (ankle), swivel back or forth (wrist), etc. Basically, if you were to apply local anesthesia it would allow you to move normally because there would be no pain inhibiting you from moving around. Basically, if someone who runs a 4.40 sprains their ankle and then applies local anesthesia, removing the pain, would it allow them to run at least a 4.50 if not a 4.40? or would the anatomy of the sprain limit this movement? and when I say sprain, I'm talking about the kind of sprain that Adrian Peterson had or that Rob Gronkowski. some ligaments torn but not a lot. For example, if Gronkowski were to apply local anesthesia to his ankle for the superbowl, would it allow him to play at 80-100%? Or am I missing something about how local anesthesia works. Local anesthetics are used in childbirth to relieve the pain, and I honestly can't imagine too many physical pains worse than that. and of course an ankle sprain is nothing compared to that. Also, is it against NBA or NFL policy to use local anesthetics? because I don't see why you wouldn't use it in a superbowl, where no matter what further injury you incur, you will have 7 months to recover.

• Answer:

  You are correct to think that further injury could be incurred, but you may be mistaken to assume that full recovery would invariably occur within 7 months. Sometimes recovery may only be partial, regardless of the time allowed for recovery. Sometimes the injury could lead to long term problems such as arthritis.