Heart failure, sometimes known as congestive heart failure, occurs when the heart muscle does not pump blood as well as it should, which could result in electrical instability in the ventricles and cause sudden death. Properly assessing patients with diagnostic tools such as EKG, echocardiogram, nuclear stress test, blood work and heart rate monitoring are the best practices to identify heart failure-related risk factors, including coronary artery disease, hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes.