SAO PAULO - THE woman who as a beautiful teen inspired Brazil's best-known song, The Girl from Ipanema was in a Sao Paulo hospital on Friday suffering from a gastric problem, she told the news website Terra.

Helo Pinheiro, now in her mid-60s, said she had checked into the Sirio-Libanese Hospital in the city because of chest pains she feared were symptoms of 'a cardiac problem', but tests showed it was 'only gastric'.

The woman, whom songwriters Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes described as 'Tall and tan and young and lovely' when she walked by their cafe in Rio de Janeiro's upmarket Ipanema district aged 15, was accompanied by her husband.