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Background The COVID-19 pandemic has exerted a significant impact on health-care workers. Recent publications have reported the detrimental effects of the pandemic on neurosurgery residents in North America, Asia and Italy. However, the impact of the pandemic on neurosurgical training in Latin America and Spain has not been yet reported. In the present report we describe effects of COVID-19 on training and working conditions of neurosurgery residents in these countries. Methods An electronic survey with 33 questions was sent to neurosurgery residents between September 7, 2020 to October 7, 2020. Statistical analysis was made in IBM SPSS Statistics 25. Results 293 neurosurgery residents responded. Median age was 29.47 ± 2.6 years, 79% (n = 231) were male. 36.5% (n = 107) were of residents training from Mexico. 42% surveyed reported COVID-symptoms and two (0.7%) received ICU care. 61.4% of residents had been tested for COVID and 21.5% had a positive result. 84% of the respondents mentioned persisted with same workload (≥70 hours per week) during the pandemic. Most of residents from Mexico were assigned to management of COVID patients compared to the rest of the countries (88% vs 68.3%, p <0.001); mainly in the areas of medical care (65.4% vs 40.9%, <0.001), mechanical ventilators (16.8% vs 5.9%, p=0.003) and neurological surgeries (94% vs 83%, p=0.006). Conclusion Our results offer a first glimpse of the changes imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic to neurosurgical work and training in Latin America and Spain, where health systems rely strongly on resident workforce.

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