New Specialty Dental Practice Opens In Marlboro

MARLBORO, NJ — Rachel Halpern is no stranger to the medical field.

A lifelong resident of Monmouth County, Halpern’s father worked as an OB/GYN for 40 years, and her sister also works as a dental hygienist.

In high school, Halpern gained experience in the field by shadowing at her sister’s hygienist practice, but it was when she went on to shadow an endodontist that she found her true calling.

“That’s where I fell in love with the specialty of endodontics,” Halpern told Patch. “Because people come in with a lot of pain, but they also want to save their tooth. We can do both.”

While an oral surgeon might be where you go to have a tooth taken out, endodontics is a dental specialty that aims to treat pain or infection with a focus on saving the patients’ natural teeth, Halpern said.

After attending Columbia University’s College of Dental Medicine, Halpern went on to New York University for her endodontic specialty.

Once she graduated from NYU, she then worked at an endodontic practice in Toms River for a little over three years before opening her own practice, Excel Endodontics, in Marlboro.

According to Halpern, the inspiration to open her own practice came both from her desire to serve her community and to be closer to home for her family.

“I’m a mother of three kids who are six, three and one,” Halpern said. “I wanted to be able to serve my community, but also be home for them as well and have a better commute [she was previously driving around 45 minutes each way to work in Toms River].”

“So after three-and-a-half years, that’s when I decided to officially open Excel Endodontics,” she continued.

At Excel, Halpern and her team offer a variety of services that range from root canals (with a specialty of performing them on more “difficult teeth” such as back molars) to retreatments, treating cracked teeth, microsurgery/apicoectomies and more.

In addition to Excel’s services, the practice also has a 3D X-ray machine called a CBCT scan, which allows doctors to diagnose the problem, see if there’s an infection (and if so, how big it is), and allows them to see how many roots are in a tooth or if there’s a crack or fracture.

“That really sets us apart from the general dentist,” she said. “They don’t have this 3D scan, but we do. It allows us to diagnose the problem and then do the treatment properly.”

While Halpern said most people don’t know about endodontic services until it’s something they need, it doesn’t make the practice any less important, especially considering how many (or few) endodontists may be in a person’s area.

“There’s a lot of dentists, but not many endodontic specialists, and a lot of them have a very long wait to be seen,” she said. “Some could have a four to six week wait. But if you have a lot of pain in your tooth, you can’t really wait four to six weeks to be seen.”

It’s because of this need for endodontists that Halpern said it was important to her to get Excel open and ready to go so people could come in for treatment.

Since the practice's soft-opening in November, she said Excel has had a warm welcome from Marlboro and the greater Monmouth and Ocean County communities.

“People have been coming in, and they’ve been very happy that we’re either close to their house, or that we take their insurance (some other endodontic practices may not),” Halpern said. “So they’re happy to come here.”

To learn more about Excel Endodontics, you can visit their website.

Excel Endodontics is located at 475 County Route 520, Suite 102, Marlboro.