Evaluation of Wide Corneal Epithelial Remodeling after Small Incision Lenticule Extraction (SMILE) with Wide-Field Optical Coherence Tomography

Table 3

Epithelial thickness changes in central, paracentral, mid-peripheral, and peripheral zones over time.

	Preoperative mean ± SD (μm)	1 day (1) mean ± SD (μm)	1 week (2) mean ± SD (μm)	1 month (3) mean ± SD (μm)	3 months (4) mean ± SD (μm)	6 months (5) mean ± SD (μm)
Central	52.33 ± 2.70	52.88 ± 3.36	52.44 ± 2.87	55.58 ± 3.67	57.39 ± 3.67	56.70 ± 3.22
value		1.000^a	1.000^a 1.000^b	<0.001^a <0.001^c	<0.001^a 0.003^d	<0.001^a 1.000^e
Paracentral	52.23 ± 2.45	53.23 ± 3.13	53.01 ± 2.74	55.87 ± 2.83	57.50 ± 2.95	56.59 ± 2.82
value		0.240^a	1.000^a 1.000^b	<0.001^a <0.001^c	<0.001^a 0.003^d	<0.001^a 0.533^e
Mid-peripheral	51.75 ± 2.31	52.09 ± 3.00	51.25 ± 2.46	53.17 ± 2.48	54.34 ± 2.50	53.36 ± 2.36
value		0.930^a	1.000^a 0.069^b	0.001^a <0.001^c	<0.001^a 0.002^d	<0.001^a 0.131^e
Peripheral	50.03 ± 2.39	48.41 ± 2.80	46.77 ± 2.29	48.33 ± 3.08	49.38 ± 3.26	48.46 ± 2.63
value		<0.001^a	<0.001^a <0.001^b	<0.001^a <0.001^c	0.791^a 0.025^d	<0.001^a 0.086^e

SD: standard deviation. ^aComparison from preoperative values; ^bcomparison between (1) and (2); ^ccomparison between (2) and (3); ^dcomparison between (3) and (4);^ecomparison between (4) and (5).