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1. The quality of involving entry into the living body (as by incision or by insertion of an instrument).
   "Surgeons have traditionally performed this surgery using a conventional open incision into the chest wall or abdomen but today are increasingly offering the operation as a laparoscopic procedure that lessens the invasiveness of the surgery."
    
2. The quality of tending to spread; especially of tending to invade healthy tissue.
   "Our results provide support for within-host evolution as one but not the sole explanation for the invasiveness of these bacteria."

Type of: ability, characteristic

Encyclopedia: Invasiveness