We study phase shifts of the propagating slow waves in coronal loops invoking the effects of thermal conductivity, compressive viscosity, radiative losses and heating-cooling imbalance. We derive a general dispersion relation and solve it to determine phase shifts of density and temperature perturbations relative to the velocity and their dependence on equilibrium parameters ($rho_0$, $T_0$). We estimate phase difference ($Delta phi$) between density and temperature perturbations and its dependence on $rho_0$ and $T_0$. The effect of viscosity on the phase shifts was found negligible. The role of radiative losses along with h/c imbalance for chosen specific heating function ($H(rho, T) propto rho^{-0.5} T^{-3}$) in determining phase shifts, is found to be significant for the high density and low temperature loops. The h/c imbalance can increase the phase difference ($Delta phi approx 140^circ$) for low temperature loops compared to the constant heating case ($Delta phi approx 30^circ$). We derive a general expression for the polytropic index. We find that in the presence of thermal conduction alone, the polytropic index remains close to its classical value for all the considered $rho_0$ and $T_0$. However, it reduces to a value $1.2$ when loop density is decreased by an order of magnitude compared to its normal coronal value. We find that the inclusion of radiative losses, with or without h/c imbalance, cannot explain the observed polytropic index. The thermal ratio ($d$) needs to be enhanced by an order of magnitude, in order to explain its observed value $1.1 pm 0.02$ in the solar loops. We also explore the role of different heating functions for typical coronal parameters and found that although the polytropic index remains close to its classical value, the phase difference is highly dependent on the form of heating function (The abstract is restructured for arxiv).
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