MODENA. On Monday morning he did not show up in the operating room and worried colleagues tried in vain to contact him on the phone. Dr. Antonio Laganà, 64, a well-known orthopedist and highly respected traumatology and orthopedic surgery specialist between Modena and Reggio Emilia, was found lifeless in his home in via Paradisi in Reggio, in all probability struck down by an illness.
The doctor never missed an operation, so last Monday the colleagues, noting the unusual absence without warning, alerted the family. They too failed to find him and raised the alarm, going to the house in via Paradisi in the station area where the 64-year-old lived alone. The Reggio Emilia firefighters opened the apartment door at noon on Monday, discovering the body of the specialist; according to the coroner, the heart had stopped beating several hours earlier.
Originally from Reggio Calabria, Dr. Laganà specialized in orthopedics and traumatology in 1987 and in hand surgery in 1990. Orthopedic hospital deputy at the Concordia-Mirandola Orthopedics department from January 1988 to February 1989, orthopedic hospital assistant in the role of Sassuolo hospital from March 1989 to February 1998, Laganà had been an orthopedic medical director at the University Hospital of Modena since 1998.
Since 2010 he has been working at the Suzzara hospital (Mantua), where since 2014 he has held the role of coordinator of the Traumatological activity of Orthopedics 1 and Deputy Head of the Complex Operative Unit of Orthopedics and Traumatology. At the same time since 2004 he worked as a freelance in the affiliated Salus Hospital in Reggio Emilia and later in the Joint Care Team also operating at the Villa Verde Nursing Home in Reggio Emilia. Specialist in arthroscopic surgery of the knee and hip, Dr. Laganà was a regular in the operating room: in just three years he boasted over six hundred surgeries performed as first operator, of which two thirds of prosthetic surgery and one third of traumatology.
The news of his disappearance spread yesterday in the medical environment, arousing amazement and grief. «A splendid and special person. An excellent professional, ”said his colleagues, recalling Laganà’s contribution to the best orthopedic surgery teams, from that of Dr. Rodolfo Rocchi at Villa Salus to that of Dr. Gabriele Cavazzuti at Villa Verde. The funeral will take place this morning with a civil ceremony. The coffin will leave at 9 am from the Coviolo cemetery to arrive directly at the cemetery of Marzaglia, in the Modena area, where his wife and two children reside.