Free guide · Scarlet Beast En español →
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 a patient guide from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) 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
- Call 911 if you are short of breath or struggling to breathe, you feel very light-headed or like you are going to faint, you have new chest pain or pressure, or your heart is racing and you feel dizzy. Those are emergency signs in the VA’s patient guide.
- Weight up 3 or more pounds in one day, or 5 pounds in a week? The VA guide says to call your healthcare team. The same goes for swelling that has worsened, a new cough, or finding it hard to breathe when you lie down.
- 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.
Your heart, blood pressure, blood sugar, thyroid or blood, and not sure this is the right page? The pages on this site for a heart attack or stroke, blood pressure, AFib, heart failure, cholesterol, diabetes and prediabetes, the thyroid, anemia, sickle cell and menopause, on one list.
Other guides on this site that go with this page
Free to read. We chose these ourselves; no professional did. Each guide was written with AI and has not been reviewed by a professional. They are general information, not advice.
- Diabetes, heart disease, and stroke: what raises the risk, the warning signs, the ABCs, and the medicines: diabetes, heart disease and stroke: why diabetes raises the risk, what else adds to it, the warning signs of a heart attack and a stroke, how doctors check your heart, aspirin, statins and the medicines to ask about, and your diabetes ABCs.
- Help as you get older: one number that finds help near you, staying in your own home, help paying for Medicare, and scams.
- High blood pressure and kidney disease: what it does to the kidneys, who is more likely, the numbers and tests, the medicines, and everyday steps: high blood pressure and kidney disease: how high blood pressure harms the kidneys and how damaged kidneys raise it more; how common both are; who is more likely; the symptoms; the two blood pressure numbers and the GFR and urine albumin tests; ACE inhibitors, ARBs and diuretics; sodium, DASH and protein; and activity, weight, smoking, alcohol and stress.
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 website 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 on October 9, 2026 in a patient guide from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“Living with Heart Failure”, publication IB 10-1163, May 2019): the 911 signs, the reasons to call your healthcare team, and the weigh-in steps are the VA’s. Changed on October 9, 2026: those three things used to come from pages whose publisher does not allow their text to be reused this way. We stopped relying on them, and took out what we could not find in the sources we do use: six questions to ask yourself, the steps for taking your pulse and blood pressure, a list of what can make heart failure suddenly worse, and two tips about exercise and rest. The weight figure changed with the source, from “more than 2 to 3 pounds” in a day to “3 or more pounds”. 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.