In 2013, when Dr Anil Bhoraskar, a Mumbai-based diabetologist, had to undergo a knee replacement surgery, general anaesthesia was ruled out since his obesity and other prevailing medical conditions posed a risk. "The joint was distorted severely. Since the knee surgery couldn't be delayed any further, I decided to undergo a surgery with minimum risk to life. The safest anaesthesia was spinal or epidural. Because of the obesity, epidural too would carry certain risks, so we settled for spinal," he says.