Sir, we would like to share a rather amusing case involving an extraction technique on a tooth with its own point of application. A patient was admitted for removal of 38 under local anaesthetic in our outpatient department. The tooth was partly erupted but in a fairly vertical position. When a mucoperiosteal flap was raised we noticed a carious cavity buccally which was not visible on the radiograph. Therefore, without the need of bone removal, a Cryer elevator was applied to the cavity as a point of application and the tooth was elevated in a straightforward manner.

In the available literature the drilling of a cavity into a tooth to create an application point during elevation has been described.1,2 In our case this tooth already had an appropriately sized buccal cavity created by caries subgingivally and hence no drilling was required (Fig. 1). The figure reveals a slight distally curved root and the tooth morphology favoured the path of withdrawal of this tooth in a distal direction. With slight rotation of Cryer elevator within the cavity the tooth eventually 'popped out' distally. This enabled the extraction in an atraumatic manner with no bone removal or tooth sectioning required.

Figure 1
figure 1

The 'helpful' tooth which was straightforward to extract

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