The limited availability of diverse and representative training data poses a critical barrier to the development of clinically relevant computational tools for intraoperative surgical decision support. As surgical interventions are not routinely recorded and data annotation often requires domain knowledge, existing open-access surgical video datasets with high-quality annotations are available only for a restricted number of surgical procedures, such as cholecystectomy, and typically originate from a single institution. Appendix300 is a comprehensive dataset of video footage from 330 surgical procedures, including 312 full-length recordings of laparoscopic appendectomies in pediatric and adult patients treated at five German centers, along with 18 control recordings of non-inflamed appendices collected during non-appendectomy laparoscopic surgeries. Clinical metadata for each recording includes patient demographics, medical history, clinical symptoms, preoperative laboratory parameters, and postoperative histopathological findings. Additionally, we provide annotations of the grade of appendicitis based on the intraoperative presentation. This dataset enables new and clinically relevant validation tasks for computer vision in laparoscopic surgery, thereby enhancing the breadth and translational relevance of AI-based surgical video analysis.

FRK declares advisory roles for Radical Healthcare, USA; and the Surgical Data Science Collective (SDSC), USA. JNK declares consulting services for Bioptimus, France; Owkin, France; DoMore Diagnostics, Norway; Panakeia, UK; AstraZeneca, UK; Scailyte, Switzerland; Mindpeak, Germany; and MultiplexDx, Slovakia. Furthermore, he holds shares in StratifAI, Synagen, and Ignition Labs, Germany, has received a research grant by GSK, and has received honoraria by AstraZeneca, Bayer, Eisai, Janssen, MSD, BMS, Roche, Pfizer and Fresenius. MD declares advisory roles for AESCULAP AG, Germany; and Intuitive Surgical, USA, and has received honoraria from Medtronic. All other authors declare no competing interests.

https://drks.de/search/de/trial/DRKS00030874

This work was supported by the German Cancer Research Center (CoBot 2.0) and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) as part of the German Excellence Strategy (EXC 2050/1, Project ID 390696704) within the Cluster of Excellence Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI) of the Dresden University of Technology. FRK receives support from the Joachim Herz Foundation (Add-On Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Life Science), the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership AnalytiXIN Initiative, the Evan and Sue Ann Werling Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (EPAR4157) funded, in part, by Grant Number UM1TR004402 from the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Clinical and Translational Sciences Award. MK and ACJ are supported by the European Union through NEARDATA under grant agreement ID 101092644. JNK is supported by the German Cancer Aid (DECADE, 70115166), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (PEARL, 01KD2104C; CAMINO, 01EO2101; SWAG, 01KD2215A; TRANSFORM LIVER, 031L0312A; TANGERINE, 01KT2302 through ERA-NET Transcan; Come2Data, 16DKZ2044A; DEEP-HCC, 031L0315A), the German Academic Exchange Service (SECAI, 57616814), the German Federal Joint Committee (TransplantKI, 01VSF21048) the European Union Horizon Europe and innovation programme (ODELIA, 101057091; GENIAL, 101096312), the European Research Council (ERC; NADIR, 101114631), the National Institutes of Health (EPICO, R01 CA263318) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR, NIHR203331) Leeds Biomedical Research Centre. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institutes of Health, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care. This work was funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor other granting authorities can be held responsible for them.

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

This dataset was collected in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. All data were compiled in an anonymized fashion using the described user interface. The responsible Institutional Review Boards reviewed and approved this study on August 4th, 2022 (ethics committee at the Technical University Dresden, approval number BO-EK-332072022), September 13th, 2023 (ethics committee of the Saechsische Landesaerztekammer, approval number EK-BR-75/23-1), and December 23rd, 2023 (ethics committee of the Landesaerztekammer Baden-Wuerttemberg, approval number B-F-2023-023). The trial, in the context of which this dataset was acquired, was prospectively registered at the German Clinical Trials Register (Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien, DRKS) on December 9th, 2022 (trial registration ID: DRKS00030874). Patients were informed about the anonymized acquisition, analysis, and publication of data from their inpatient treatment. Following local legislation, no written informed consent was required for anonymized acquisition, analysis, and publication of clinical data.

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

Yes

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

Yes

Data will be made publicly available following the peer review process for non-commercial use under the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY. If readers wish to use or reference this dataset, they should cite this paper.