[en] Some patients having a cancer treated by radiotherapy can suffer from an hypersensitivity with respect to UV and ionizing radiations which corresponds to an inter-individual variability of the response to the geno-toxic stress induced by radiations. A predictive approach of this risk has been developed which shows the interest of an analysis of the individual capacities of repair of DNA radio-lesions. This approach uses the alkaline comets test. The application of this test to the patients' lymphocytes shows a high percentage of severe reactions of normal tissues after the radiotherapy course with a high residual level of broken DNA strands which gives evidence for a repair defect. The retrospective application of this test to breast cancers with radiotherapy complications without any genetical predisposition has permitted to validate this test in order to use it as a predictive diagnosis of the individual susceptibility of patients with respect to radiotherapy. (J.S.)