Ewing Dental Associates has come a long way from the home office where it was founded in the 1940s, but the family atmosphere hasn’t changed.
The modern, high-tech dentists’ office traces its roots back to Pennington Dental Associates, which was a traditional family practice where two dentists gave patients silver fillings and root canals over multiple visits.
Dentistry was much more painful back then, with dentists sometimes drilling patients’ teeth before they were fully numbed. It isn’t that way anymore, with dentists striving to make the entire visit as painless as possible.
Pennington Dental Associates was still a traditional practice in 1973, when then-Ewing resident David Goodman joined. It was when Goodman’s son Paul joined Pennington Dental Associates in 2005 that the practice became more modern and more specialized. Now instead of just general practitioners, the Goodmans’ practice boasts an endontist, (for root canals) a periodontist (for gum care) and an orthodontist (for correcting misaligned teeth.) David’s youngest son, Jeffrey, joined in 2009, and now the father and his two sons work together.
In 2011, the family acquired the office of Dr. Arthur Nadleson who died in March, and named it Ewing Dental Associates.
“He created a great staff, with great, loyal patients,” David Goodman said.
The two offices are just four miles apart, allowing easy access for patients who need to travel between the two. The dentists practice in Ewing Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
Recent years have brought big changes to the way dentistry is practiced. Paul Goodman focuses on implants, and stays on top of the latest techniques and materials. Currently, ceramic implants are the state of the art, a technology that was unthinkable back in the 1940s.
Paul Goodman, who teaches dentistry at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York City and frequently gives lectures on implants, said it is possible to give someone an entirely new set of teeth with implants, but that often, for elderly patients with dentures, just two implants on the lower jaw can make a huge difference in quality of life.
Many people with dentures find they slip on the lower half of the mouth, but that just two implants can stabilize them.
“It can change your life,” Paul said
In the past, dentists typically used bridges, which destroyed two neighboring teeth to anchor a new one.
Another recent innovation is in isolation techniques to keep teeth dry when drilling, which results in better long-term outcomes for fillings.
Ewing Dental also offers teeth whitening.
David said for any procedure, the goal at Ewing Dental Associates is to give the patient a pain-free experience that is as relaxing as possible. For especially anxious patients, there is nitrous oxide and an iPod available loaded with relaxing jazz music.
Paul Goodman said what makes Ewing Dental Associates unique is the family relationship at play. When faced with a challenging case, the Goodmans work well together to solve the problem, he said. Three dentists are better than one.
The different specialties also mean that many patients can get all their work done in one place.
“It’s a multidisciplinary approach, which means we’re capable of doing most of our own work without referring patients to other areas,” he said. “We have specialists that work with us in our office.”
The Goodmans don’t hesitate to refer patients to specialists when needed, Paul said, but the need to do so is not as common as it might be at other offices.
The Goodmans live in Pennington now, but have Ewing ties. David lived in Ewing for many years, and Paul went to Lore Elementary School.
Despite all the advances in the last 70 years, in one respect, the father-and-sons business is as old school as it gets.
“We’re very relaxed because we’re family,” David said. “There’s perfect harmony.”
Ewing Dental Associates is located at 177 Scotch Road in Ewing. Phone: (609) 771-4111. On the Web: Ewingdental.com.
Dentists Paul
