Meet Natalie Furgiuele, MD, FACS

Patients are like family.

When Nikki Williams walked into the office of Natalie Furgiuele, MD, FACS, 20 weeks pregnant with a lump in her breast, the surgeon knew that this patient needed even more highly specialized care than she normally provides. A board-certified breast surgeon and director of the Penn Highlands Mon Valley Breast Program, Dr. Furgiuele has treated hundreds of women (and some men) with breast cancer during her four decades in practice.

“Once you treat a person with breast cancer, they become a lifelong patient,” explained Dr. Furgiuele. “I treated Nikki’s mother who had breast cancer five years before she found the lump in her own breast.”

She continued, “Once we have established a breast cancer diagnosis and provided treatment, I continue to monitor the patient so that we can be alert for recurrences.”

Dr. Furgiuele makes the diagnosis, treatment and aftercare as comfortable and convenient as possible for her patients.

“We help our patients access all of the necessary services related to their breast cancer – from diagnosis to treatment planning. We even schedule their appointments with medical oncology and radiation oncology to help ease some of their anxiety.”

Dr. Furgiuele is very much at home in Southwestern Pennsylvania and Penn Highlands Mon Valley. A native of South Brunswick Township, New Jersey, she met her husband, Daniel Iracki, MD, a pulmonologist and critical care physician who is board-certified in hospice and palliative care, when she was in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. The couple moved to Pittsburgh together for residencies at a large metropolitan hospital. They raised their four children in the region because they loved the culture and the small town feel of the big city.

Dr. Furgiuele carries that same type of feeling to her patients. While she has a very busy practice, she gives every patient her cell phone number and tells them to call her if they have a question that just cannot wait until her office hours.