The use of silver-coated polyester fabric in a valve sewing cuff fabrication is intended to reduce the incidence of prosthetic valve endocarditis. Staphylococcus epidermidis was used to evaluate resistance to infection in a mouse subdermal model. Fabric was inoculated by preincubation in bacterial suspensions. Bacteria adherent to fabric and percent infection were assessed, and a logistic regression model was used to estimate the concentration of inoculum required to produce 50% infection (ID50). Direct enumeration showed no difference in adherent bacteria for either type of fabric. Nevertheless, incubation in growth media showed that many of the fabric samples were infected. The calculated ID50 was significantly lower for silver-coated fabric than for uncoated fabric, for all three strains of S. epidermidis tested.