Introduction: Beginning in the 1990s, the World Health Organization incorporated domestic violence into public health, thereby removing it from the exclusive purview of law enforcement and the justice system. As part of its mandate to conduct epidemiological surveillance of the population’s health status, the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (now Santé publique France) undertook an analysis of the available literature to report on epidemiological findings and knowledge in this field across Western countries. Method: Literature searches were conducted in PubMed and on institutional websites in 2012 and again in 2015. Results: The studies were classified into eight categories, including: prevalence, specific populations (pregnant women, older adults, etc.), health consequences, risk factors, etc. Here, only prevalence rates and the health consequences for victims are addressed. Prevalence data show differences between countries, but variations in methodologies limit the scope of comparisons and the analysis of trends. In this context, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights applied an identical protocol to 28 European Union countries in 2014, which revealed that one in five European women has been a victim of physical and/or sexual violence and nearly one in two has been a victim of psychological violence. A study by the World Health Organization shows that 38.6% of homicides of women and 6.3% of homicides of men were committed by an intimate partner. In France, the Ministry of the Interior’s Victim Assistance Delegation has conducted an exhaustive annual survey of violent deaths within intimate relationships since 2006 (118 women died in 2014). Few prevalence data come from hospital sources. The list of health issues among victims is long and well-documented. Compared to non-victimized women, victims of domestic violence are estimated to have 60% more health problems overall. Conclusion: violence between intimate partners has been the subject of particularly intensive research since the 2000s. This synthesis of existing epidemiological findings in Western countries provides a foundation for identifying which aspects of this complex issue to monitor and/or investigate further.