(The New York Times News Service) -- During an operation, Peter Asnis says, 'You are looking at the tissue, you are not looking at the patient or the name.'

Week after week, Dr. Brian McKeon's reputation is as much on the line as the Celtics players he patches up. The team physician knows that one error can bring the wrath of a sports-obsessed city down on him.

When surgery is required, he leaves little to chance -- sometimes even practicing intricate maneuvers on a cadaver before going into the real operating room.

"I will bring in assistants and we will do a mock surgery right from beginning to end," said McKeon, an orthopedic surgeon at New England Baptist Hospital. "Sometimes I will do it two or three times."

Confidentiality rules won't let McKeon say just which surgeries require such dry runs -- no, it wasn't when he recently repaired Kevin Garnett's knee or Tony Allen's ankle -- but he is hyper-careful whether he's cutting into an elite athlete or an anonymous amateur.

Like McKeon, team physicians who care for these million-dollar bodies often find themselves under the most public of microscopes. Boston sports fans in particular can be tough critics. From batting slumps to busted knees, every nuance involving the hometown teams is relentlessly dissected. From their own exam rooms to sports radio, every decision team physicians make is scrutinized and often second-guessed.

The heat can be so intense that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady recently defended the care he received from a Los Angeles doctor. Brady developed a staph infection following his knee surgery last fall. Some in Patriots Nation had faulted the surgeon, Dr. Neal ElAttrache, a golfing partner of Brady's. ElAttrache declined an interview.

Many team doctors are former collegiate jocks who long ago grew accustomed to the spotlight, and as surgeons, they thrive on pressure. Still, many say they've sworn off sports blogs and sports radio because it's too frustrating to listen and read incessant speculation about players' injuries -- speculation they often know to be wrong but can't correct because even superstars have privacy rights.

The financial rewards from successful surgery on a sports star can be significant: hordes of weekend warriors will beat paths to their doors seeking the same operation.

But the incredibly high -- and very public -- stakes can be daunting. A mistake could end a professional athlete's career -- and by extension tarnish the surgeons' reputation. "I'd be lying if I said you don't think about that," said Dr. Peter Asnis, a Massachusetts General Hospital surgeon and Boston Bruins head team physician. He recently fixed forward Phil Kessel's shoulder.

"Once you've made your incision and things start going, it doesn't really enter your mind all that much," Asnis said. "When you are doing an operation, you are looking at the tissue, you are not looking at the patient or the name."

The most anxious moments, for Asnis, come when one of his pro athletes returns to play after rehabilitation and starts to "take their first few hits. You want to make sure they are doing well."

For sports doctors, the public's appetite for any snippet of information about their heroes is inescapable. At his 15th Harvard reunion this past weekend, Asnis was eager to catch up with buddies he hadn't seen in years.

But what classmates really wanted to dish about were the Bruins, as well as the Red Sox and Patriots, all teams cared for by his Mass. General practice.

"I didn't answer any of the questions about the athletes, so they were generally short conversations," Asnis said.

Former Philadelphia 76ers physician Dr. Nicholas DiNubile, a spokesman for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, said one of the most frustrating parts of being a team physician is the verbal "pot shots" from fans who probably don't realize that some players who have publicly talked about nursing injuries are not, in fact, sitting out games for medical reasons.

"We have had athletes that we've sent all over the country for second and third opinions when you're pretty sure they don't have a ((medical)) problem but they're having a squawk with the team," he said.

"Then they get traded and play the next night."

Yet DiNubile said that even more challenging and emotionally draining than his 12 years with the 76ers has been caring for top collegiate athletes and Olympic hopefuls. "So many people on the brink of spectacular performances, the body does fail," he said. "They have high expectations and hopes and dreams and their whole career ahead of them ... and you almost feel more pressure in that situation."

Perhaps one of the most scrutinized sports surgeries in recent memory was the "bloody sock" saga -- the innovative procedure Dr. Bill Morgan performed on Curt Schilling's ankle that allowed the Red Sox pitcher to play in the 2004 postseason. Morgan sutured Schilling's loose tendon, keeping it in place just long enough to pitch in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees, then removed the sutures and reinserted them before he pitched Game 2 of the World Series.

Blood seeped into Schilling's sock during those two games, but the Sox went on to win the series, breaking an 86-year-old drought.

"Knowing Red Sox Nation, if that had gone badly, I probably would have been practicing in Tijuana," said Morgan, a team physician for 18 years.

He now heads orthopedic surgery at the Fallon Clinic and Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester.

Morgan said that it is not in his nature -- nor that of most top sports surgeons he's met -- to second-guess himself. "You go into surgery because you have that type-A personality: You like to get things done," he said.

One other common trait: sports surgeons to the stars said they have resisted pressures to bend the rules -- skip some routine pre-surgery testing, for instance -- to accommodate elite athletes' schedules and demands. That, they all agree, is a no-no because when they stray from tried and true practices, mistakes can happen. "It works out wonderfully, if I stick to my principles," said McKeon, the Celtics team doctor. "Then I don't care if I have the president on the table, I am ready.

That's my approach."

Copyright 2009 The New York Times News Service. All rights reserved.