What’s The Latest Thinking About Cold Hosing?

directly in contact with the skin can develop tissue injury mostly of the skin Distal limb pathologic conditions in horses treated with sleevestyle digital cryotherapy for at least 12 hours 285 cases ProctorBrown et al. 2018. However there are no studies currently evaluating the negative or positive effects of cryotherapy on tissue healing in horses and so the assumption that cryotherapy would result in decreased healing due to a reduction in the positive effects of inflammation is purely speculative.
We have fairly good evidence Influence of topically applied cold treatment on core temperature and cell viability in equine superficial digital flexor tendons Petrov et al. 2003 that even at low temperatures cryotherapy in the form of a circulating cooling unit with compression splint used for 60 minutes has no effect on the viability of the cells in the superficial digital flexor tendon of the horse even at temperatures reaching 10 degrees C 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  In addition cold hosing results in less intense cooling of the horses limb than other types of cryotherapy like standing in ice water or direct icing. Therefore you are unlikely to reach these low temperature levels in horses using cold hosing alone Evaluation of the cooling efficacy of different equine leg cooling methods Marlin et al. 2019.
The benefits of cold therapy
The benefits of cryotherapy are fairly well described. They range from improvements in recovery time to decreased inflammation necrosis and pain depending on the area treated. The efficacy of cooling with phase change material for the treatment of exerciseinduced muscle damage pilot study Kweicien et al. 2018 and Cryotherapy suppresses tendon inflammation in an animal model Zhang et al. 2014.
Therefore I dont think there is any harm in continuing to cold hose your horses limbs after a workout. In the case of an acute tendon injury