Celebs in the ER Add to Pressure on Docs

June 3, 2008 — -- For doctors operating on high-profile patients like Sen. Ted Kennedy, an ability to ignore the hype and focus on the surgery at hand could mean the difference between life and death, doctors say.

"[Patients] all look the same on the inside," said New York-based cardiologist Dr. Wayne Isom, who performed Regis Philbin's triple bypass surgery in 2007. "And it's when doctors start trying to treat someone differently because of who they are that gets them into trouble."

Kennedy became the latest public figure to go under the knife when doctors at the Duke University Medical Center operated Monday on a malignant brain tumor discovered after the senator suffered a seizure last month.

Duke's Dr. Allen Freidman, who operated on the Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement shortly after the three-and-a-half hour surgery that the procedure had been successful.

Like Kennedy, 76, many celebrity patients have taken their turn on the operating table, from Vice President Dick Cheney, who has had multiple heart surgeries, to former President Bill Clinton, who had quadruple bypass surgery in 2004, to NBC's late night talk show host David Letterman, who had quintuple bypass surgery in 2000. They've all had to trust their doctor's steady hand under the limelight of fame.

Remembering that celebrity patients are no different from more typical ones is imperative to a successful outcome, several surgeons and doctors told ABCNEWS.com.

"From the standpoint of medicine and surgery you don't change anything [when treating a celebrity client]," said New York-Presbyterian Hospital's Isom. "If you get carried away with the media — and some doctors do — you're getting away from what you're trying to do."

Isom, who has treated other high-profile patients such as "The Tonight Show's" Jack Parr, compared performing an operation to flying an airplane.

"When you're approaching the landing as a pilot you're not thinking about anything, like who is [in the passenger seat]," Isom said. "All you're focusing on is landing the plane. Surgery is like a sterile cockpit; nothing is going on other than you and the co-pilot landing a plane."