Background: Meta-analyses dealing with continuous outcome data usually report the effect of an intervention by using either mean difference (MD) or standardized mean difference (SMD). These two effect sizes often have a difficult clinical interpretation. Re-expressing the intervention effect in terms of risks may facilitate understanding and applicability, particularly in the context of a ‘Summary of findings’ table. For primary studies, researchers can easily determine odds ratios or relative risks for a given cut-point, but in meta-analysis, this is not straight forward when the only available information is means and standard deviations for the two intervention groups. Objectives: To review, develop and compare methods for transformations that enable meta-analyses of continuous outcomes to be presented as risks. Methods: We compared four methods in different applications and in a series of simulation studies. Two involve direct transformation of the SMD to an odds ratio (OR). The two other involve estimation of risks for a specific cut-point, one that can be applied to meta-analysis of MDs by specifying a typical control group mean and SD. To evaluate the methods, we simulated continuous outcome data for a single, two-group study, according to various distributions, different sample sizes and control group risks. Results: Methods based on direct transformation of SMD to OR have reasonable properties for symmetrically distributed data when applied to risks near 0.5, but are biased for extreme risks. When the standard deviations are different across the two groups, these methods suffer from serious biases. One of the methods that estimate risks for the two groups has good properties for normallydistributed data and large sample sizes, but is problematic for small sample sizes, when both bias and imprecision can occur. Conclusions: Methods for expressing meta-analyses results from continuous outcome data are sensitive to underlying distributions, sample sizes and cut-points. We are not able to recommend a method for widespread application in ‘Summary of findings’ tables. We offer suggestions for situations in which the various methods may safely be applied.