Is It Wise to Hunt for Cut-Rate Plastic Surgery?

Just a quick plane ride away from many American cities, Costa Rica offers what America cannot: inexpensive medical care and affordable recovery resorts. That was all the three women needed to see.

"It's so much cheaper there, I'm going to get some lipo done. And before you know it, well, I think I'll get a breast augmentation. What the heck. I'm there anyways," Firth said.

And because Firth had brought her sister, the doctor had offered a discount.

Brown said she planned to have a thigh lift, a tummy tuck, an arm lift and a breast lift with implants — all for $7,000. That's about a quarter of what that laundry list of procedures would cost in the United States.

The women checked the references of the surgeons who were performing the procedures — Luis Da Cruz and Federico Macaya — and felt confident about the doctors' credentials.

Still, even the best credentials can't guarantee perfect results. News reports describe horror stories abroad and in the United States. "20/20" has reported a case of one American woman who died from cosmetic surgery.

But danger was the last thing on the minds of the three women, and they were soon off to sunny Costa Rica to fulfill their beauty dreams.

Many people worry that if cosmetic surgery is so much cheaper in Costa Rica, that it has to be substandard, but Da Cruz, who worked on the two sisters, assures his patients they'll receive quality care.

"I always say it's not that here is cheap. It's that outside in some places it's too expensive," he said.

Less-Than-Perfect Results for One Patient

"20/20" checked in with Vredenburg, Brown and Firth months after their surgeries.

They all felt and looked great, but for Vredenburg it was rough road to recovery after surgery. A painful infection set in soon after she got home to Savannah, Ga. "It was considered you know life threatening at that point and I was beside myself. It was kind of like, 'What have I done to myself?'" she said.

Though it seemed like such a quick plane ride when she was healthy, Costa Rica and her doctor now felt like a world away. She turned to a local emergency room.

"I felt I was treated pretty badly because I immediately told them that I had had surgery out of the country. And it was, 'Oh, so that's what you did? Well that's why you're in trouble,'" she told Roberts.