Table 5.

Risk differences for the adverse effects and treatment failures in randomized clinical trials assessing corneal collagen cross-linking (epi-on vs. epi-off)

Adverse effect	RD	95% CI	P
Keratoconus progression	− 0.025	− 0.059 – 0.008	0.141
Delay in epithelial healing	0.049	0.0030 – 0.0946	0.035*
Persistent stromal haze	0.0525	0.0063 – 0.0986	0.026*
Sterile infiltrates	0.0036	− 0.0206 – 0.0279	0.768
Infection	0.0036	− 0.0206 – 0.0279	0.768

CI confidence interval; RD risk difference

If the value of the summary effect is negative, epi-on corneal collagen cross-linking would have more risk of adverse effects. Otherwise, epi-off would have this condition. All the results were obtained through fixed-effects models due to the lack of heterogeneity

*Indicates statistical significance