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When it’s heart failure
For people who have heart failure (also called congestive heart failure), people who get short of breath or have swelling and don’t know why, and the people beside them. This page passes on, by name, what the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine’s site, say: when it is a 911 call and when to call your provider, how heart failure is found and what the ejection fraction number means, the kinds of medicine, the morning weigh-in and the other checks to do at home, salt, fluid and activity, and what causes it. It builds the questions to ask at a visit. Take only what you need today.
A word with a dotted line under it, like this, opens its official definition, quoted from a U.S. government glossary.
Right now
- Go to the emergency room or call 911 if you faint, you have a fast and irregular heartbeat (especially with other symptoms), or you feel a severe chest pain. Those are MedlinePlus’s signs. Ours, not from that page: call 911 too if you cannot get your breath.
- Weight up more than 2 to 3 pounds in a day, or 5 pounds in a week? MedlinePlus says to contact your provider. The same goes for more swelling, more shortness of breath, or a cough that sounds wet.
- Chest pain can also be a heart attack: When it might be a heart attack.
- Thinking about ending your life? Call or text 988, at any hour.
More help
- It might be a heart attack: When it might be a heart attack.
- Keeping track: My medicines, Blood pressure log, Symptom diary and My emergency card.
- Before a visit: Get ready for your appointment.
- No insurance, a medicine or a bill you can’t pay: When you need a doctor and can’t pay, When you can’t afford your medicine and When a medical bill is too much.
- What often comes with it: When blood sugar goes too low or too high, When it’s your kidneys and When it’s COPD.
- Can’t work the way you did: Ask for what helps you work and Applying for disability benefits.
- Planning a day around the energy you have: Energy budget.
- Looking after someone: When you’re caring for someone.
- All our free tools.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or person living with heart failure has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 8, 2026 on the websites of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (nhlbi.nih.gov: its heart failure pages on what it is, symptoms, diagnosis, causes and risk factors, treatment, and living with it, each dated March 24, 2022) and MedlinePlus, from the National Library of Medicine (medlineplus.gov: its articles “Heart failure” and “Heart failure - home monitoring”, review date July 14, 2024). The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own. What we left out or did not read: NHLBI’s lists of side effects (they are on its treatment page), what its 2022 page says is still being studied or not yet approved, any amount of salt, fluid or medicine, how long people live with heart failure, heart failure in children, and anything about what Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance pay for (we could not open Medicare.gov’s cardiac rehabilitation page this time). The numbers for weight are general ones: your provider’s numbers come first. We called no number. It saves nothing and loads no tracking.