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Purpose: Mini-dental implants (MDIs) have been used to support and retain overdentures, providing patients with a less invasive placement procedure. Although lucrative, the use of MDIs to retain a maxillary overdenture is still not an established treatment modality. This systematic review aims to answer the question: Do mini-implant-retained maxillary overdentures provide a satisfactory treatment outcome for complete edentulism? Methods: A systematic search for relevant articles was conducted to include articles published until April 2021 in the following electronic databases: CINAHL, Cochrane, EMBASE, PubMed, and Web of Science. All empirical studies evaluating the biological, survival, or patient-reported outcomes after placing mini-implant-retained overdentures in maxilla were considered for inclusion. The risk of bias was assessed by utilizing the Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal checklist. Study screening and data extraction were conducted by three reviewers independently. Results: The electronic search retrieved 1276 titles after omitting duplicates. Twenty articles were considered for full-text review, of which six studies were included in this systematic review. The included studies evaluated a total of 173 participants with a mean age of 66.3 years. The overall mini-implant survival rate was 77.1% (95% CI: 64.7–89.5%) with a mean follow-up time of 1.79 years (range: 6 months to 3 years). Implant survival differed significantly when comparing complete and partial palatal coverage overdentures. Those with complete palatal coverage exhibited less bone loss overall compared to partial coverage overdentures. Participants of all studies reported an increase in the quality of life and in satisfaction after rehabilitation treatment with MDIs. Conclusions: The survival rate of mini-implants retaining an overdenture in the maxilla was observed to be lower than the values reported for traditional implants in the literature. Improvements were observed in all aspects in terms of patient satisfaction, quality of life, oromyofunction, and articulation after the treatment.

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Death, or more accurately the defiance of death, is a recurring theme in Walt Whitman’s poetry. It is also an elusive one: though he consistently asserts humankind’s immortality, Whitman never arrives at a final treatment of death, instead allowing both his disposition toward death and the basis for his beliefs to be continually informed by his experiences. In this paper, I seek to better understand the metamorphosis of Whitman’s faith in immortality by exploring his use of astronomical imagery. He repeatedly calls upon stars, planets, and the night sky when discussing death, and his use of these motifs varies considerably throughout his career. To observe how the overlap between death and astronomy changes over time, I analyze poetry from three editions of Leaves of Grass: the first (1855), the edition published after the Civil War (1867), and the last (1891-1892). In doing so, I show that while Whitman initially found validation for immortality through external sublimity, this validation eventually collapses upon itself, leading him to discover an even more intense (yet still indefinite) proof within his own, internal poetic intuition.