When to perform a crown amputation vs a full true tooth extraction

In an interview at the 2025 Fetch dvm360 conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, Heather Duncan, DVM, DACVD, founder and CEO of Crown Veterinary Dental Specialists in Charlotte, explained when a crown amputation is appropriate to do, instead of a full true tooth extraction. In her discussion, Duncan also provided an overview of how this procedure should be done.

Below is the interview transcript, which has been lightly edited for clarity:

Heather Duncan, DVM, DACVD: So during the different presentations today, we had some really great interaction, really great questions from the audience. One thing that we discussed that wasn't really in a lecture per se, was when we can do crown amputations. So that's a big topic, especially for cats that have tooth resorption. So you get a patient under anesthesia, you do your oral exam, you know, everything may look okay or you may see that we have a tooth resorptive lesion. Sometimes you take those dental xrays or imaging, and then you find like something below the gum line, because 60% of the tooth structure is below the gum line—so xrays are really important.

So a time that you could do a crown amputation, versus true extraction of a tooth is when you see that there is no root structure left. So we don't have anything that looks like a root. There's no periodontal ligament traceable around that root. There's no root canal, you know, chamber, anything, left in that root. That's when you can do a crown amputation for a tooth. You're still going to lay your mucogingival flap like you would normally. You're going to remove as much as of a root that there is, even if there's a little one up at the top, and then do your crown amputation. And then you're going to release a tension-free flap, suture that back into place, just like you would a regular extraction. But again, there's no root to go in and get so those are the cases that we can do a crown amputation in.