Nearly six million Americans currently live with heart failure, yet a recent national survey found potentially dangerous misconceptions and knowledge gaps about the disease. In fact, nearly half of those surveyed got fundamental facts about heart failure wrong and two-thirds of respondents confused signs of heart failure with signs of a heart attack.

Each year, about 600,000 Americans – one in four deaths -- in the United States are from heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of the 715,000 Americans who have a heart attack each year, about 525,000 are first-timers, says the CDC, and those individuals may not know what’s happening.