A woman who did not realise she was having a heart attack has called on other women to take notice of the symptoms and seek medical help.
Ellie Byrne was working from home when she experienced symptoms of a heart attack, which her daughter recognised and sought emergency medical help for.
A recent study by heart and stroke charity Croí revealed that one in two women are unaware that heart attack symptoms in women may differ from those experienced by men.
Chest pain is the most common symptom in both women and men, which women often describe as a pressure or tightness.
Other issues which women are more likely than men to experience include neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or upper stomach pain; shortness of breath; pain in one or both arms; nausea or vomiting; sweating; lightheadedness or dizziness; unusual fatigue; and heartburn.
"My daughter said she would call an ambulance, and I said 'you're being ridiculous, it's two weeks before Christmas, I don't have time for a heart attack'," Ms Byrne said.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne programme, she said she was so dismissive of her symptoms that she was still cleaning the kitchen when paramedics arrived.
"I kept wincing and pressing my hand under my rib cage on my left-hand side and then going back to my work on my laptop," she said.
Her daughter Jane had just completed a first aid course at work and one of the topics she had studied was heart attack symptoms in women.
"She asked, 'have you any other symptoms?' and I said 'now that you mention it, I'm getting pain out through my shoulder blades, pain in my back and slightly up into my jaw' and she said 'oh my God, Mum, I'm calling an ambulance'," Ms Byrne said.
"It turned out I had a major blockage in one of the main arteries in my heart and subsequently they also discovered that I had an aneurysm in the aortic artery and a leaky valve, so basically I was on the brink of catastrophe.
"The symptoms had been going on for weeks and I was ignoring them."
Ms Byrne explained that the pains she had experienced had happened separately and she attributed them to indigestion and acid reflux.
"The pain in the rib was not significant, a tiny pain, but the pain out through my shoulder blades was kind of severe," she said.
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"But I now subsequently know that they were very, very clear and very obvious signs.
"Women need to take notice; forget about the dishes, forget about Christmas, if you've got these niggly symptoms, you need to get them checked out."
In a separate incident 10 years prior, Ms Byrne had suffered from another heart episode, which she had also initially been dismissive of.
She had felt unwell on her way to work and struggled on the short walk from her car to the building.
A student noticed and escorted her to an on-site ambulance, where paramedics attributed her symptoms to stress.
Ms Byrne felt a tingling sensation in her left arm later that day, at which point she sought medical attention and was told that she had experienced a small heart attack, caused by an undetected hole in her heart.
Also speaking on the programme, Sarah Earley, a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at St James's Hospital and a clinical senior lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, said that it is "very common" for women to be dismissive of their symptoms when they are experiencing a heart attack.
"Women often have been through quite a lot, particularly post-menopausal, you've had all of these symptoms so you're probably thinking it's just more of the same," she said.
"You're not old; 60 is not old, 70 isn't really old, and if you're developing new symptoms out of nowhere, you're getting short of breath where you never had been, you're getting indigestion, these are really common things.
"It is really important to think about your heart - it could be your heart, and don't ignore it."
Croi has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the symptoms of heart attacks amongst women, which can include jaw, neck and back pain.
It said heart disease is one of the leading causes of death of women in Ireland, with one in four women dying from cardiovascular disease.
According to a survey of 500 women it conducted, while many women believed they would recognise the signs of a heart attack, only 3% were able to name all relevant symptoms.
Half of those surveyed were aware that the critical warning signs in women may differ from those in men.
