Texting friends or strangers during surgery reduces pain

Having undergone my fair share of surgeries with local anesthetics (a few general ones too), I can definitely vouch for the physical pain. I have to admit however that it wasn't directly in the targeted area, but rather in the surrounding area.

One example, I had surgery done around my cheek-bone area and one of the tools they used was some sort of soldering iron. The heat propagating and the pretty drastic changes in skin tension were absolutely noticeable and painful. They asked me right before the surgery if I wanted drugs to help but decided against it. Instead, I ended up talking to the staff throughout the entire surgery, got them to explain what they were doing and, perhaps surprisingly, it was a very pleasant experience overall. The distraction definitely helps with the pain.

Another example, I went through a number of inner ear surgeries. One of the tools they use produces an insanely strident noise, designed in part to expand your eardrum to its limits (IIRC). Even with the local anesthetic, it felt like somebody was drilling through my head. I can't quite describe the pain, but it's the worst thing I've ever had to go through (many times at that). I doubt that sheer anxiety could produce this level of physical pain.

So from my admittedly anecdotal evidence, I would tend to agree with the article.

I've had only a couple of instances of anaesthetic application - minor leg surgery and dental work. But in both cases I was in a degree of pain.

The leg surgery was vein removal, the pain of the failure of a heated catheter to get past one of my venous valves (causing the retreat to using evulsions - which had some "burning" pain [like strong nettle sting] associated with it). There was also non-pain sensation that wasn't pleasant to focus on - the feeling of the scalpel being inserted and the blood running down my leg whilst not painful didn't exactly make me feel settled.

Mind you I couldn't have texted whilst doing that as I was too busy slowly passing out whilst describing the process to a theatre nurse ...

Anaesthetic isn't an exact science is it?

It's unclear to me from the article and linked abstract (and the paper is paywalled) just what kind of minor procedures they mean, but it could be something where a topical anesthetic can be applied but there would still be active internal nerves, like a biopsy of something internal. For things like that, not needing narcotic anesthetic would reduce risk of side effects and also make things much more convenient -- e.g., patients could leave under their own supervision.

Getting fillings involve a local, but it's often far from painless.