In a paper dated 2000 [1], a fully analytical theory of the radiative shock has been presented. This early model had been used to design [2] radiative shock experiments at the Laboratory for the Use of Intense Lasers (LULI) [3 5]. It became obvious from numerical simulations [6, 7] that this model had to be improved in order to accurately recover experiments. In this communication, we present a new theory in which the ionization rates in the unshocked (bar{Z_1}) and shocked (bar{Z_2} neq bar{Z_1}) material, respectively, are included. Associated changes in excitation energy are also taken into account. We study the influence of these effects on the compression and temperature in the shocked medium.