Approximately 30 to 50% of patients will develop chronic pain following mastectomy5,6. It has been suggested that adequately treating pain in the immediate perioperative period will prevent chronic pain. Specifically, application of EMLA (local anesthetic) cream perioperatively during breast surgery has been shown to reduce the incidence of chronic pain development7. Perioperative administration of intravenous lidocaine may offer similar benefits. Therefore, we will study the incidence of chronic pain in our population after 6 months.